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MADAME DE STAEL AND HER 
LOVERS 



MADAME DE STAEL 
AND HER LOVERS 



FRANCIS GRlBBLE 

AUTHOR OF 

THE EARLY MOUNTAINEERS," "LAKE GENEVA AND ITS LITERARY 

LANDMARKS," ETC. 



NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT & CO. 

LONDON: EVELEIGH NASH ^ 
1907 



J>c ^ 



u 



\ 



PREFACE 



The Life of Madame de Stael has been written 
a good many times. The earlier biographies — 
up to and including the ambitious work by 
Dr. Stevens — are inadequate, owing to the 
scantiness of the material then available. 
They give a somewhat uncritical relation of 
Madame de Stael's public life, but leave her 
personal life wrapped in mystery, without even 
suggesting that there are secrets unrevealed. 
Lady Blennerhassett's book, written in German, 
and translated into both French and English, is 
much better from every point of view. At the 
time of its appearance Benjamin Constant's 
Journal Intime had just been published in 
the Revue Internationale. That extraordinary 
document threw quite a fresh light upon Madame 
de Stael's character. It showed her as the exigent 
mistress, clinging to a reluctant lover, and refusing 
to let him go. Lady Blennerhassett quoted a 
good deal from it. Hers is consequently the 
first Life in which Madame de Stael appears as 
a woman with a passionate heart and not as a 
philosopher in petticoats. 

The story thus brought to light was not 



Preface 

absolutely a new one. There had been some 
gossip about it in articles printed in the Revue 
des deux Mondes at the time of Benjamin 
Constant's death. Sainte-Beuve had heard 
something of it from Madame Recamier, and 
had repeated what he had heard in certain of 
his Causer ies du Lundi. There had been 
references to it in one or two of Sismondi's 
letters to the Comtesse d'Albany. Details, 
however, were lacking. The story rested in the 
main upon oral tradition, and had almost been 
forgotten when the publication of the Journal 
Intime revived it. But the Journal Intime, 
which is probably the most pitiless piece of self- 
analysis ever put on paper, has never been 
translated. In so far as it is known at all to 
English readers, it is known only through the 
extracts cited by Lady Blennerhassett ; and it 
merits far more minute attention than is given 
to it in her pages. 

Moreover, the Journal Intime was not the 
only document needed for the thorough under- 
standing of the story. It is further illuminated 
by a considerable mass of correspondence to which 
Lady Blennerhassett had not access. Some 
passages in the Memoirs of B arras show us 
how the relations of the lovers struck a cynical 
observer of the period. The letters of Benjamin 
Constant's cousin Rosalie to her brother Charles, 
preserved in the Geneva Public Library, are full 
of picturesque, and sometimes poignant, particulars. 

vi 



Preface 

Benjamin Constant's own letters to his cousins and 
to his aunt, Madame de Nassau, help us to bridge 
many gaps in the narrative. It is from these that 
we infer that Benjamin Constant indubitably- 
believed — what Barras states as a matter of 
common knowledge — that Madame de Stael's 
youngest child, Albertine, afterwards Duchesse 
de Broglie, was not M. de Stael's daughter, but 
his.^ 

Madame de Stael's own letters to her lover are 
unfortunately, with few exceptions, missing from 
the collection ; and the Constant letters tell us 
why. They were kept in a box, originally stored 
by Madame Constant at Hanover, but afterwards 
consigned to the care of other members of the 
Constant family at Lausanne. Immediately after 
Benjamin Constant's death, the Duchesse de 
Broglie wrote to Charles de Constant, asking that 
the box and its contents might be surrendered to 
her, as Benjamin Constant had promised that they 
should be. Charles de Constant complied with 
her request. The letters were surrendered, and 
are believed to have been destroyed. If they 
exist, they are in safe custody in the Tower of the 

1 " Benjamin Constant seemed to me to do justice to the truth of 
the reciprocal positions Madame de Stael had somewhat distorted 
for his sake, in order to still further excite his imagination, which 
was perhaps rather inclined to excitement at that very time, when 
the public saw proofs which were hardly equivocal of an affection 
strongly shared, in the birth of a daughter whom Madame de Stael 
called Albertine, and the resemblance of whose features, hair, 
everything in fact, appeared to the world as the striking image of 
Benjamin Constant" {Memoirs of Barras, vol. iii. p. 162). 

vii 



Preface 

Archives at Coppet. The Comte d'Haussonville, 
who at present owns and occupies that mansion, 
does not consider that the story which they tell 
concerns the public ; and when he writes of 
Madame de Stael, as he often does, he ignores 
Benjamin Constant altogether. 

The box, however, did not contain all the letters 
that passed between the lovers. A few of them 
— a very few — were printed by Strodtmann in 
Germany, and reprinted by Lady Blennerhassett. 
A larger collection which had remained in the 
hands of the descendants of Madame Benjamin 
Constant were published, a few months ago, by 
that lady's great-granddaughter, in the American 
Critic. The Critics description of them as " love 
letters " is not entirely accurate. Only a few of 
them, at any rate, are rightly so described. Their 
date is subsequent to what is generally regarded 
as the final breach between the lovers — subsequent 
to the locking of the box of which Benjamin 
Constant's cousins took charge. Their interest 
is only retrospective ; they only rake dead ashes. 
But they nevertheless add a good deal to our 
knowledge not merely of the facts but also of the 
psychology of the intimacy under review, and form 
one fresh piece of evidence among many that this 
intimacy was the one event of really permanent 
importance in Madame de Stael's life. 

During her lifetime she had several distinct 
reputations. Her fame, and the story of her 
persecutions, echoed from end to end of Europe. 

viii 



Preface 

Most justly might she have asked : " Quae regio 
in terris nostri non plena laboris ? " Her con- 
temporaries reckoned her a great politician, a 
great philosopher, and a great novelist. They 
called her after the heroine of her chief romance, 
and they spoke of her "duel" with Napoleon. 
Posterity sees these aspects of her renown in a 
more true proportion. In politics her successes 
and her failures alike were only those of the wire- 
puller. As a political philosopher she figures only 
as the apologist of her father's mediocrity. As a 
metaphysician she is only the echo of an echo, 
reproducing Schlegel's reproduction of the thoughts 
of Kant. As a novelist she only followed the 
fleeting fashion of the hour, and her Corinne 
hardly counts for more in the history of literature 
than Madame de Krudner's Valerie. 

Those were her limitations. Professor Saints- 
bury has pointed them out in the Encyclopcsdia 
Britannica\ though he adds that to recite them 
and then stop "would be in the highest degree 
unfair." If Madame de Stael was not a great 
thinker or a great artist, she was at any rate 
a "live" woman of immense ability and great 
force of character, whose personality had to be 
reckoned with in most of the departments of 
endeavour. Even Talleyrand was, at one time, 
glad to lean upon her influence ; even Sir James 
Mackintosh was deceived by the glitter of her 
writings ; even Byron was jealous of the figure 
she cut in Society ; even the Duke of Wellington 



Preface 

knelt to kiss her hand ; even the Russian Emperor 
sought her advice. 

Outwardly, therefore, in spite of her limitations, 
and in spite of Napoleon's hostility, her life was 
crowned with success. She did not despise her 
success ; homage and applause were the things 
for which she appeared to live. But the tribute 
of flattery and the consciousness of powder did not 
satisfy her. These things were vain unless she 
could also love and be loved. That is the secret 
of her inner life. She tried to be — in a sense and 
to an extent she was — grande amoureuse. 

Perhaps she loved love better than she loved 
her lovers ; certainly she did not always love either 
wisely or well. In her youth she made a foolish 
marriage with her eyes shut ; in middle life she 
made a ridiculous marriage with her eyes open. 
Neither the foolish marriage nor the ridiculous 
marriage was allowed to be an obstacle to any 
more passionate or more sentimental appeal to 
her emotions. Her treatment of Rocca, the 
infatuated boy, was not a great deal better than 
her treatment of M. de Stael, the cynical 
man of the world, who bought her dowry with his 
title. Even her lovers had some reason to com- 
plain of the levity of her affections. Benjamin 
Constant's relatives complained very loudly on 
his behalf. 

None the less, she never lost sight of the ideal. 
She craved for happiness, and believed that 
happiness was only to be found in love ; she 



Preface 

always did her best to persuade herself that her 
first love was her last and that her last love was 
her first. But she was weak, and circumstances 
were strong, and, in her infidelities, she was only 
following the example which men set her. M. de 
Stael forsook her society for that of actresses ; 
M. de Narbonne tired of her. Again and again she 
was driven to make a fresh start in her sentimental 
life. That is why her case is so profoundly in- 
teresting. Her conduct, viewed without reference 
to its motives, was that of a loose woman ; but the 
motives transfigure it. Madame de Stael meant 
well, and felt good. Her aim was not merely to 
achieve happiness, but also to impart it ; her real 
life was in that struggle, and not in any political 
adventure or any literary undertaking. Every 
new document that comes to light confirms that 
estimate of her character, and suggests that it may 
be worth while to re-write her Life from a fresh 
point of view. 



XI 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEP I 

PAGE 

Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod — Her flirtations with the 
ministers of religion — Her engagement to Gibbon — Did 
Gibbon treat her badly? — His proposal that the corre- 
spondence should cease — Mademoiselle Curchod's flirta- 
tion with the Yverdon lawyer — She throws him over to 
marry Necker ...... I 

CHAPTER II 

Necker's genealogical tree — How he got it and what he paid 
for it — The Neckers at Geneva — The scandalous frivolity 
of Louis Necker — Jacques Necker in Vernet's and 
Thelusson's banks — His rise in life — His courtship of 
Suzanne Curchod — " Each became the other's thurifer " . 13 



CHAPTER III 

The grandeur of the Neckers — Madame Necker and her 
poor relations — Birth of a daughter — Her education in a 
salon — And in a garden — Necker in office — And out of 
office — A course of foreign travel — The purchase of 
Coppet — The place of exile . . . .24 



CHAPTER IV 

Mademoiselle Necker's early writings — Her secrets revealed 
in her short stories — Her love for General Guibert — The 
match-makers at work — Marriage to the Baron de Stael- 
Holstein . . . ... . -34 

xiii 



Contents 



CHAPTER V 

PAGE 

Necker recalled to office — Dismissed — Recalled again after 
the fall of the Bastille — Fails — Resigns — Retires to 
Coppet — Madame de Stael's essay on the works of 
Rousseau — Inferences that can be drawn from it — 
Madame de Stael's salon — Description of it by Gouver- 
neur Morris — Progress of the Revolution — Madame de 
Stael saves her friends and then leaves Paris . . 46 



CHAPTER VI 

From Coppet to Mickleham — The motive for the journey — 
The emigres at Juniper Hall — Madame de Stael's friend- 
ship with Fanny Burney — M. de Narbonne "behaves 
badly" ....... 60 



CHAPTER VII 

Madame de Stael returns to Switzerland — Her exertions on 
behalf of the emigres — Correspondence on this subject 
with Henri Meister — Death of Madame Necker — 
Benjamin Constant introduces himself . . .71 



CHAPTER VIII 

Benjamin Constant de Rebecque — His ancestors — His pre- 
cocious childhood — His dissolute youth — He meets 
Madame de Charriere at Paris and visits her at 
Colombier — ^ Writes the History of Religion on the backs 
of playing-cards — Departure for Brunswick — Affectionate 
correspondence — Colombier revisited — The end of the 
liaison ....... 



CHAPTER IX 

Benjamin Constant's intimacy with Madame de Stael — What 

Rosalie de Constant thought — The Paris salon re-opened 

— Services rendered to Talleyrand — And to Benjamin 

Constant — Revolt and reconquest — The birth of Albertine 

xiv 



Contents 



CHAPTER X 

PAGE 

M. and Madame de Stael separate — The alleged " duel " with 
Napoleon — Publication of De la Litterature — Death of 
M, de Stael — Why Madame de Stael did not then marry 
Benjamin ....... 109 

CHAPTER XI 

Publication of Delphine — A roman-d-c/ef—'N ecker writes a 
novel — Social life at Coppet — And at Geneva — Corre- 
spondence with Camille Jordan — He refuses to travel with 
Madame de Stael in Italy — She goes to Germany with 
Benjamin Constant instead . . . -123 

CHAPTER XII 

Travel in Germany — The German view of Madame de Stael 
— Life at Weimar — And at Berlin — Benjamin Constant's 
studies and amusements — Extracts from his Diary — 
Death of Necker . . . . . -5 34 

CHAPTER XIII 

Madame de Stael returns to Coppet — The reason why she 
was not allowed to go to Paris — She decides to visit 
Italy — Benjamin Constant drags at his chain — Further 
extracts from his Diary ..... 147 

CHAPTER XIV 

The Diary continues — Benjamin Constant at Coppet — Attempt 
of his relatives to find him a wife — He goes to Lyons to 
see Madame de Stael off to Italy . . . .160 



CHAPTER XV 

Madame de Stael's triumphs in Italy — She " gives perform- 
ances in the character of woman of letters " — Her 
relations with Monti — Benjamin Constant in Paris — His 
relations with Madame Recamier, Madame Talma, and 
other friends . . . . . .172 

d XV 



Contents 



CHAPTER XVI 

PAGE 

Corintie ........ 185 



CHAPTER XVn 

The return from Italy — The hfe at Coppet — The visitors — 
Their reminiscences — Descriptions of Coppet by Madame 
Vigee Le Brun — By Baron de Voght — By Rosalie de 
Constant — Quarrels with Benjamin Constant . . 194 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Theatrical performances at Coppet — Extracts from the 
Journcdlntrnte — Benjamin Constant renews his acquaint- 
ance with Charlotte Dutertre — He proposes marriage 
and is accepted — Madame de Stael pursues him and 
drags him back to Coppet . . . . . 206 



CHAPTER XIX 

Stormy scenes at Coppet — Benjamin's confidences to his aunt 
— His endeavours to escape — He joins Charlotte at 
Brevans . . . . . . . 223 

CHAPTER XX 

Benjamin marries Charlotte secretly — They go to Paris and 
are happy — Madame de Stael is told — Her wrath — Her 
sons threaten Benjamin with personal violence — He 
promises to keep the secret of his marriage a little longer 
— He returns yet again to Coppet — The financial settle- 
ment with Madame de Stael .... 233 



CHAPTER XXI 

Mysticism at Coppet — Madame de Stael writes De PAllemagne 
and goes to France — Her manuscript is confiscated, and 
she is expelled — She returns to Coppet and endures 
petty persecutions ...... 244 

xvi 



Contents 



CHAPTER XXII 



PAGE 



Madame de Stael makes the acquaintance of Rocca and 
secretly marries him — Benjamin and his wife arrive at 
Lausanne — Rocca challenges Benjamin, but the duel is 
avoided — The Constants start for Germany — Extracts 
from Benjamin's Journal and letters . . . 254 

CHAPTER XXIII 

The campaign of persecution at Coppet — Birth of Madame 
de Stael's youngest child — It is boarded out — Madame 
de Stael starts by the only road open to her for England 
— Vienna — Kiev — Moscow — St. Petersburg — Stock- 
holm — Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His regrets 
for Madame de Stael ..... 266 

CHAPTER XXIV 

Madame de Stael arrives in London — Murray the bookseller 
publishes De VAllemagne — The qualities and defects of 
the book ....... 279 

CHAPTER XXV 

Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His intrigue on behalf of 
the Crown Prince of Sweden — It comes to nothing, and 
he goes to Paris — Madame de Stael's letters to him — 
Rocca is not to be " a hindrance " — Napoleon having 
abdicated, Madame de Stael goes to Paris . . 290 

CHAPTER XXVI 

Benjamin Constant in love with Madame Recamier — His 
account of the passion in his Diary — Finding that he 
loves in vain, he rejoins his wife .... 301 

CHAPTER XXVII 

The Constants in London — The publication of Adolphe — The 

place of .(4^£7^>^e in French literature . . .312 

xvii 



Contents 



CHAPTER XXVI 1 1 

PAGE 

In Paris — Marriage of Albertine to the Due de Broglie — 
Trouble about the dowry — Madame de Stael applies to 
Benjamin Constant for money — He refuses it — A quarrel 
and a renewal of friendship • . . . 324 

CHAPTER XXIX 

Madame de Stael in Italy with the Broglies — Return to 

Coppet — Distinguished guests — Byron's visit . . 334. 

CHAPTER XXX 

Madame de Stael's last journey to Paris — Her illness and 

death ....... 342 

CHAPTER XXXI 
The last years of Benjamin Constant .... 351 

Index ....... 365 



XVlli 



MADAME DE STAEL AND 
HER LOVERS 

CHAPTER I 

Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod — Her flirtations with the ministers 
of religion — Her engagement to Gibbon — Did Gibbon treat 
her badly ? — His proposal that the correspondence should 
cease — Madem.oiselle Curchod's flirtation with the Yverdon 
lawyer — She throws him over to marry Necker. 

The story, since it has no inevitable beginning, 
may best be dated from the day when Mademoi- 
selle Suzanne Curchod, the pastor's daughter and 
the village belle, descended from "the mountains 
of Burgundy" ^ and captured the heart of the future 
historian of the Roman Empire. 

She who was presently, as Madame Necker, 
to set the frivolous Parisians the example which 
they needed of a prim propriety, was hardly, in 
those days, considered either prim or proper in 
serious circles at Lausanne. Her reputation, it 
would be truer to say, was that of a flirt who 
flirted with the extreme audacity of provincial 
innocence. 

1 From Grassier, near Nyon. It is not really in Burgundy, but 
the phrase is Gibbon's. 

A I 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Her earliest recorded flirtations were with the 
ministers of the gospel who assisted her father 
in his parochial duties. She used to invite their 
signatures to documents, drafted in playful parody 
of legal contracts, whereby they engaged them- 
selves "to come and preach at Grassier as often 
as she required, without waiting to be solicited, 
pressed, or entreated, seeing that the greatest 
of their pleasures was to oblige her on every 
possible occasion." Matrons and elderly spinsters 
made unkind remarks, but the young clergymen 
signed gladly. There was a great deal of human 
nature in the Swiss clergy of those days, and 
a great many of them were poets as well as 
preachers. 

At Lausanne the village beauty opened a 
school. She presents the figure, perhaps unique 
in history, of a schoolmistress who was also what 
in the England of the same period would have 
been styled a "reigning toast." "At the end of 
the lane which leads to the mineral waters of La 
Poudrerie, her pupils built her a throne, and it 
was there that she distributed her praises and h^r 
prizes, and received the compliments of the wits 
attracted by her fame." That is how her Academy 
is described by a contemporary writer ; and Dr. 
Tissot,^ the fashionable Lausanne physician, adds, 
not without a gentle touch of irony : " Mademoiselle 

^ Author of many medical works, notably an Essai sur les 
maladies des gens du monde. He became a Professor in the 
Medical School at Padua. 

2 



Mademoiselle Curchod's Flirtations 

Curchod is too beautiful and too learned for me 
to venture to be her friend ; while I am neither 
young enough nor ignorant enough to present 
myself as her scholar." 

The younger citizens, however, — and notably 
the clergy and the theological students, — aspired 
more highly. Not only did they take part with 
Mademoiselle Curchod in Debating Society dis- 
cussions of such themes as " Does an element 
of mystery really make love more agreeable ? " or 
** Can there be friendship between a man and a 
woman in the same sense as between two women 
or two men ? " — they also wrote odes and letters 
to her, and published them in the Journal 
Helv^tique. For example : — 

" Parfaite, les Destins vous montrent sur la terre, 
Pour jouir du tribut qu'on doit aux Immortels. 

Nos coeurs seront autant d'autels 
Faits pour vous presenter un hommage sincere 

De respect et d'amour. 
C'est le plus doux soin de ma vie 
Que de m'en acquitter en secret chaque jour. 

Mais aujourd'hui je le publie." 

To which the poet adds in prose : " Yes, 
charming, or rather divine, Cur . . . . , I cannot 
refuse to express those sentiments. You, in 
your single person, furnish the model of the 
beauties which Zeuxis failed to find in combina- 
tion. Though I should add to this beauty the 
wisdom of Minerva, rendered amiable by the 
sweetness of the Graces and the playful badinage 
of Hebe, your portrait would still be imperfect." 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

That is one tribute among many that appeared. 
Three such tributes are reprinted at full length by 
Professor Eugene Ritter in a pamphlet entitled 
Notes sur Madame de Stael, It is not sur- 
prising that Gibbon, then a pupil in the house of 
Pastor Pavilliard, felt impelled to enter the lists 
for such a prize. He may even have felt that 
here was a challenge which the honour of his 
country required him to take up. So we read in 
his diary: "Saw Mile Curchod. Omnia vincit 
amor ; et nos cedamus amori'' And a remin- 
iscence of Julie von Bondeli ^ tells us that " he used 
to run about, like a madman, in the fields in the 
neighbourhood of Lausanne, carrying a sword in 
his hand, and compelling the husbandmen to con- 
fess that Mile C. was the most beautiful person 
in the world." 

Nor was Mademoiselle Curchod, on her part, 
insensible to the Englishman's attentions. We 
have a portrait of him from her pen — one of those 
sketches which it was then the fashion for young 
people to make of each other, as essays in the art 
of composition. "He has beautiful hair," she 
writes, " a pretty hand, and the air of a man of 
rank. His face is so intellectual and so strange 
that I know no one like him. It has so much 
expression that one is always finding something 
new in it. His gestures are so appropriate that 
they add much to his speech. In a word, he has 

^ A lively blue-stocking from Berne, in correspondence with 
Rousseau, Wieland, and other eminent men of the age. 

4 



The Love Story of Gibbon 

one of those extraordinary faces that one never 
tires of trying to depict. He knows the respect 
that is due to women. His courtesy is easy 
without verging on familiarity. He dances 
moderately well." 

So there began the love story with which, so 
far at least as its main outlines are concerned, 
Gibbon's Autobiography has made the world 
familiar. Gibbon was invited to visit the parson- 
age at Grassier : "In a calm retirement the gay 
vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom, 
and I might presume to hope that I had made 
some impression on a virtuous heart." But his 
" dream of felicity " was to remain a dream. His 
father "would not hear of this strange alliance." 
Sighing as a lover, but obeying as a son, he took 
up his pen and wrote : — 

" I do not know how to begin this letter. Yet 
begin it I must. I take up my pen, I drop it, 
I resume it. This commencement shows you 
what it is that I am about to say. Spare me the 
rest. Yes, Mademoiselle, I must renounce you 
for ever. The sentence is passed ; my heart 
laments it ; but in the presence of my duty every 
other consideration must be silent." With more 
in the same strain, concluding : " Good-bye. I 
shall always remember Mile Curchod as the most 
worthy, the most charming, of women. May she 
not entirely forget a man who does not deserve 
the despair to which he is a prey ! " 

Was he treating her badly? Did she really 

5 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

care? M. d'Haussonville, her great-great-grand- 
son, answers both questions in the affirmative, 
arguing the matter almost with the animus of a 
man who sees in the jilting, in the remote past, 
of his great-great-grandmother an ineffaceable 
blot upon the family escutcheon. As regards the 
former question, his case appears to rest upon an 
error as to the date of a letter. Gibbon, he says, 
after leaving Lausanne in 1758, kept silence for 
four years, and then, without warning, broke off 
the engagement in 1762. But the letter which 
M. d'Haussonville dates 1762 conveys a saluta- 
tion to Pastor Curchod, who died in 1760. 
Evidently, therefore, it was written, not in 1762, 
but in 1758 or 1759; and the charge of callous- 
ness at least falls to the ground in consequence. 
One is glad to be able to clear Gibbon's memory 
of that; and, for the rest, it is sufficient to 
remember that he was very young at the time, 
and absolutely dependent upon his father, and 
also that Mademoiselle Curchod herself ceased to 
bear rancour very soon after the final breach. 
The second question is more difficult ; but even 
about that two things are clear : the first, that 
Mademoiselle Curchod threw herself, with very 
unmaidenly persistence, at Gibbon's head ; the 
second, that it was not very long before she 
disposed herself to seek consolation, in more than 
one quarter, for her loss. 

It was, as has been said, in 1758 that Gibbon 
left Lausanne. He returned there, in the course 

6 



A Proffered Friendship 

of the grand tour, in 1763; and attempts were 
instantly made to bring him to a sense of his 
obligations to his former fiancde. Pastor 
Moultou ^ tried ; and a certain irony attaches to 
the story of his endeavours from the fact that the 
Pastor had himself once sighed at the feet of 
Mademoiselle Curchod, but had ceased to sigh in 
order to marry another lady with a dowry of 
105,000 florins. Rousseau, at that time a 
fugitive from French justice, living at Motiers, in 
the Val de Travers, was induced to express an 
opinion which provoked from Gibbon the dignified 
retort that "that extraordinary man whom I 
admire and pity should have been less precipitate 
in condemning the moral character and conduct 
of a stranger." But the chief advances were 
made by Mademoiselle Curchod herself 

All that has been preserved of the corre- 
spondence is printed by M. d'Haussonville in 
Le Salon de Madame Necker. It discloses a 
frank attempt on the part of the lady to pick up 
the broken threads and revive the relations of five 
years since. If Gibbon will not be her lover, she 
begs that he will at least be her platonic friend. 
" Place your attachment for me," she writes, "on 
the same footing as that of my other friends, and 
you will find me as confiding, as tender, and at 
the same time as indifferent as I am to them." 

* Of Geneva. He defended Rousseau when Entile was con- 
demned to be burnt, and gave shelter in his house to the family 
of Calas. 

7 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

He accepts the proffered friendship, — " it bestows 
so much honour upon me that I cannot hesitate," 
— but he asks that the correspondence may cease. 

" I am sensible," he protests, " of the pleasures 
which it brings me, but at the same time I am 
conscious of its danglers. I feel the dang-ers that 
it has for me ; I fear the dangers that it may 
have for both of us. Permit me to avoid these 
dangers by my silence. Forgive my fears. 
Mademoiselle ; they have their origin in my 
esteem for you." 

Whereupon there follows a letter of tumultuous 
reproaches — a letter in which the spretce injuria 
formes not only speaks out but cries aloud. 
Mademoiselle Curchod has rejected other offers 
of marriage for Gibbon's sake — and this is how 
he treats her. Perhaps someone has told him 
that she flirted during his absence — it is false. 
Possibly someone has been coupling her name 
with that of M. Deyverdun^ — it is a shame and 
a calumny. And so on to the angry end : — 

*' I am treating you as an honest man of the 
world, who is incapable of breaking his promise, 
of seduction, or of treachery, but who has, instead 
of that, amused himself in racking my heart with 
tortures, well prepared, and well carried into 
effect. I will not threaten you, therefore, with 
the wrath of heaven — the expression that escaped 
from me in my first emotion. But I assure you, 

^ Gibbon's most intimate friend, whose house he shared when 
he ultimately settled at Lausanne. 

8 



The Influences of Heredity 

without laying any claim to the gift of prophecy, 
that you will one day regret the irreparable loss 
that you have incurred in alienating for ever the 
too frank and tender heart of S. C." 

That closed the passionate episode ; though 
the lovers lived, not only to be reconciled, but to 
become the best friends in the world. In a sense, 
no doubt, it is irrelevant as an introduction to the 
story of Madame de Stael. But it was worth 
relating, partly for the sake of the chance 
presented of vindicating Gibbon from the asper- 
sions of M. d'Haussonville, and partly for the 
purpose of taking the influences of heredity into 
account. One has heard a good deal of the 
differences of character betv/een Madame Necker 
and her daughter, but the resemblances seem 
worthier of attention. 

In each case equally we meet reverberant 
passion and emphatic insistence on the right not 
only to love but to be loved ; though, in the latter 
case, the emotion is more developed, more intense, 
more modern, more symptomatic of the maladie 
du siecle, — less trammelled by middle-class ideas 
about duty and the sanctity of the marriage tie. 
Madame de Stael, in short, might be described as 
a Parisian Madame Necker, and Madame Necker 
as a provincial Madame de Stael. Or we might 
put it differently, and say that Madame Necker 
suggests a Madame de Stael with a Noncon- 
formist conscience, and Madame de Stael a 
Madame Necker who has overstepped the 

9 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

barriers of circumspection. The case, at any 
rate, is not one in which heredity is negligible ; 
and the mother, wrapped in contemplation of her 
greater daughter's more signally amorous career, 
might most properly have exclaimed : "There, but 
for the grace of God, goes Madame Necker ! " 

Moreover, a further point of likeness between 
the mother and the daughter may be found in the 
facility with which they could both transfer an 
unrequited affection to a worthier object. The 
list of Madame de Stael's attachments, as we 
shall see, is long. Her mother did not unduly 
protract her grief for Gibbon ; and the reports 
which reached the historian of "the cheerfulness 
and tranquillity of the lady herself" are well 
substantiated by the facts. We have only to 
follow her career a little farther in order to meet 
the proof. 

Hardly had she uttered her bitter farewell to 
her first love than she began to consider a 
proposal of marriage from a prosperous lawyer of 
Yverdon. We have a letter from him in which 
he solicits "a favourable answer by return of 
post " ; and we have two interesting letters 
setting forth Mademoiselle Curchod's view of the 
situation. In the one she stipulates that, if she 
accepts M. Correvon's offer, she shall not be 
required to live with him for more than four 
months in each year. In the second she tells 
Pastor Moultou — the Pastor who had once been 
her suitor but had withdrawn from the suit for 

lO 



Mile Curchod to Marry Necker 

the sake of Mile Cayla and her 105,000 florins — 
that another admirer has been paying her atten- 
tions which she rather thinks may be serious, and 
concludes : " But if this castle in the air collapses, 
then I will marry Correvon next summer." One 
cannot wonder that, as the castle in the air did 
not collapse, Correvon felt himself aggrieved. 
The news was broken to him that Mademoiselle 
Curchod was going to marry the great Parisian 
banker, M. Necker, and he wrote : "I see very 
clearly that you looked upon me as a miserable 
makeshift, and that you were looking out for the 
first opportunity that might occur to settle your- 
self in Paris or elsewhere." 

The taunt undoubtedly had truth in it ; but 
there is no evidence that Mademoiselle Curchod 
was troubled by any qualms. The romantic and 
the practical met strangely in her nature. She 
was poor and a dependent. It was very important 
to her to get married. She had always looked 
upon marriage, not as an incident in the romantic 
life, but as its appointed happy termination. She 
naturally preferred to make a good marriage, and 
this was a great opportunity. M. Necker was 
not only very rich — he also had all the virtues. 
So she was much too happy to be hurt by the 
reproaches of the man whom she threw over. 
Her happiness bubbled over in a letter to a Swiss 
confidante : — 

"What a prodigious change! And how im- 
penetrable are the ways of Providence ! 

II 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" To-morrow I am to unite my lot to the man 
whom I like best in all the world. Placed at the 
head of a household, surrounded by superfluities 
which make my reason sigh without bewildering 
it, I see and feel nothing but the happiness of my 
union with the tenderest and most generous of 
souls ; but nothing shall make me forget your 
kindness to me. . . . You saw me at the hour 
when I needed all your kind sympathy to calm 
the agitation of my soul ; and had it not been for 
the wise counsels of your husband, my troubles 
would perhaps have precipitated me into an abyss 
of evil. I assure you that I regard that as one of 
the strongest arguments in favour of a special 
providential dispensation. I am marrying a man 
whom I should believe to be an angel if his 
attachment to me did not prove his weakness. 
He is called M. Necker, and is the brother of 
the Professor. His talents and his shrewdness 
have won him more consideration than his fortune, 
although he has an income of twenty-five thousand 
livres." 

Gibbon, we may take it, if remembered, was 
no longer regretted when Mademoiselle Suzanne 
Curchod wrote that letter — the last to which she 
subscribed her maiden name. The sentimental 
memories of that first romance were, indeed, long 
years afterwards, to recur to her ; but for the 
moment a new romance effaced it. 



12 



CHAPTER II 

Necker's genealogical tree — How he got it and what he paid for 
it — The Neckers at Geneva — The scandalous frivolity of 
Louis Necker — Jacques Necker in Vemet's and Thelusson's 
banks— His rise in life — His courtship of Suzanne Curchod 
— " Each became the other's thurifer." 

The statement has been made — it is repeated in 
both Dr. Stevens' and Lady Blennerhassett's 
Lives of Madame de Stael — that the Necker 
family was of British origin ; but neither of these 
biographers produces any evidence. The truth 
is that there is no evidence of any value to be 
given, and that the legend originated in this 
way. 

In 1776, M. Necker, having been given the 
charge of the French finances, felt the need of a 
coat of arms and a genealogical tree to support 
his official dignity. Being wealthy, he could 
afford to pay for such things ; and his brother 
Louis caused searches to be instituted on his 
behalf by both English and German experts. 
The English expert furnished the following in- 
formation, to be found in a manuscript in the 
possession of the Geneva Historical Society, 
copied from a document supplied by Louis 
Necker himself : — 

*' It appears from the registers that, in the time 

13 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

of William the Conqueror, a certain Roger N., 
in the public service, of the town of Armagh in 
Ireland, was nominated by the King as a Com- 
missioner for the completion of the records of 
Domesday-book. 

"It may be presumed that this same N. bore 
arms at an earlier date, as the majority of William 
the Conqueror's courtiers were also soldiers. He 
was given the title of ' miles,' and he carried a 
shield on which was a swan, with its neck 
separated from its body by a cut dividing the 
shield into two parts. The upper part of the 
shield was only one-third the size of the lower 
part. 

"In the reign of Edward i., about 1293, a 
Robert N., whose arms were the same, passed 
over to France, and settled in Guyenne, then 
belonging to England ; and in the following 
year the same Robert returned to Ireland with 
his armorial bearings changed, having placed at 
the head of his escutcheon a bunch of grapes, 
very probably added in honour of the country to 
which he had gone, as it abounded in vineyards. 
He retained his crest, however (a swan's neck), 
with the motto : Nobilis vita, nobilior mors'' 

That is all, except that the genealogist pledges 
himself to "terminate his researches to the com- 
plete satisfaction of M. Necker for the sum of one 
thousand pounds. The fee," he adds, "is small, 
but he is anxious to oblige." 

What he would have brought to light if he had 
had his fee and continued his investigations, it is, 
of course, impossible to say. The fee was not 

14 



Necker's Genealogical Tree 

paid ; the inquiries were not pursued ; and 
though M. Necker adopted the crest thus 
indicated to him, the verdict must be "not 
proven." The chain between N. of Armagh 
and Necker of Geneva consists principally of 
missing links. The authentic history of the 
family was supplied by the German expert, Dr. 
J. B. Steinbruck, pastor of the church of Saint 
Peter and Saint Paul at Stettin, whose charges 
were lower. "I should think," he wrote, "that 
after all my labour and researches, I have earned 
six golden louis " ; and for that fee he demon- 
strated that all the various branches of the house 
of Necker were descended from two brothers, 
Christian Necker, pastor at Wartemberg in 
Pomerania, and Matthseus Necker, silk merchant 
at Stettin, both alive at the end of the sixteenth 
century. It is only the posterity of the pastor 
that need here concern us. 

Christian's third son, Jean, was a deacon at 
Garz, on the Oder. Jean Necker had a son 
named Samuel, who was a lawyer at Kustrin. 
He married Marguerite-Sophrosine de Labehack, 
of Stettin, and was the father of Charles Frederick 
Necker, born at Kustrin, in Brandenburg, on 
January 13, 1686. Charles Frederick also became 
a lawyer, taking the oath as a member of his pro- 
fession on May 26, 171 1. He left Kustrin to 
act as travelling tutor to various young German 
noblemen, and was, furthermore, for some time 
secretary to General Saint Saphorin, British 

15 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Ambassador at Vienna. In 1724 he ofiered his 
services to Geneva as honorary Professor of Law 
at the Academy, The Register of the Council 
of the Two Hundred for the i8th of September 
of that year contains the following note on the 
matter : — 

" Discussion on the establishment of a Pro- 
fessorship of the Public Law of Germany and of 
Feudal Law, resolved upon in connection with 
M. Necker's offer to serve gratuitously ; he being 
known here for a clever and honourable man, 
acquainted with high German, which circumstance 
may attract the high German nobility to this 
town. Concerning which there were read two 
letters written by him from Vienna in Austria, 
to M. de Terrasse, and to noble Tronchin, 
formerly Syndic, expressing in very polite terms 
his great esteem for the town, and his desire to 
establish himself here, together with the offer of 
his services ; all those to whom he is known in 
the town having also borne very favourable witness 
to his good qualities and his affection for the 
State. To which it was added that the establish- 
ment of this Professorship is honourable to the 
public, advantageous to the Academy, and useful 
to private individuals, and that the functions 
thereto appertaining can only be discharged by 
a German. 

" Resolved, therefore, to accept the said offers 
of M. Necker." 

The Professor received the news of his appoint- 
ment in London, where he was staying with the 
Count of Bothmar. He was in the service of the 

16 



The Neckers at Geneva 

Elector of Hanover, who was also King of 
England, and had to seek the royal permission 
to accept the post. George i. not only gave 
permission, but also granted the Professor a 
pension to enable him to open at Geneva a 
boarding-school for English girls whose parents 
desired them to be educated on the Continent. 
This school, which succeeded admirably, laid the 
foundations of the Necker fortunes. I ts institution, 
rather than any fanciful family tree, is the link 
which connects the Neckers with Great Britain. 

The inaugural lecture was delivered in 
September 1725, and in January of the next 
year the Professor was admitted to the bour- 
geoisie of Geneva without fee, "in consideration 
of his personal merit and of the satisfactory 
manner in which he discharges his duties." In 
1734 he was made a member of the Council of 
the Two Hundred, and from 1742 to 1747 he 
was a member of the Consistory. He married 
Jeanne- Marie Gautier of Geneva, and had two 
sons — Louis and Jacques. 

Louis, commonly known as Necker de Germany, 
from an estate near Geneva which he inherited, 
became a Professor like his father, but tarnished 
the respectability of the family by his behaviour. 
The only reason for recalling the scandal of which 
he was the hero is that it throws a certain light upon 
the manners and tone of the Genevan society of 
the period, but for that reason it may be worth 
while to quote Julie von Bondeli's account of it. 
B 17 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

"It is," she writes, "a Madame Vernes, a 
merchant's wife, who has had an affair of 
gallantry with Professor Necker. That lady is 
not Rousseau's Julie ; but Rousseau, in his letter 
to d'Alembert, said that there had never been a 
woman of genius except 'Sappho and one other,' 
and that ' one other ' is said to be Madame 
Vernes, whom Rousseau saw at Geneva in '53 
or '54. Madame V. was the daughter of an 
indigent attorney. Vernes, who is rich, saw her 
in spite of the opposition of his parents, and, 
being unable to marry, became the father of a 
child which she bore him without any public 
scandal, and without losing her reputation for 
being as virtuous as she was beautiful and clever. 
At last Vernes obtains the consent of his parents, 
and, to the general astonishment, there appears 
in church with him a child eighteen months old. 
Papa and mamma were, according to the chaste 
laws of their country, thrown into prison ; but the 
parents worshipped the bride, and the public not 
only forgave but idolised her. Never before had 
such a thing been seen in this pure and holy city. 

"At the birth of her second child she had an 

abscess inconveniently situated, and the treatment 

of it tortured her for three years. She set an 

example of stoicism. Her chamber was an 

Academy, and her bed the tribunal of grace, 

virtue, and genius. Never did a woman enjoy 

such a beautiful reputation. Tronchin ^ cured her. 

Necker fell in love with her. The husband 

discovered letters, treacherously fired a pistol at 

the lover, and then ran away in despair. The 

matter was hushed up for a fortnight ; but the 

^ The famous physician of Geneva. 
18 



Jacques Necker 

tribunes of the people made inquiries, and the 
public prosecutor would not belie his oath. 
Necker denied that the husband had wounded 
him, and the lady backed him up ; but the 
surgeon who was called in found out the truth. 
The husband surrendered himself to justice as 
a murderer ; but Necker saved him from the 
scaffold by denying that he was anything of the 
kind, and submitted to a sentence of perpetual 
banishment. . . . The lady withdrew to Savoy. 
Six months afterwards she returned to Geneva, 
and so artfully rehabilitated her reputation that 
people only regarded her as imprudent and 
unfortunate. That done, she went to join Necker 
at Cadiz." 

Such is the story, on which it seems superfluous 
to moralise, though it may have its significance 
to the student of heredity as the first indication 
of warm blood pulsing in the veins of a family 
chiefly famous for dry legal erudition and dry 
financial genius. Our business now is to follow 
the fortunes of the younger and more gifted 
brother. 

He was the very type of the man who, by 
sheer will, succeeds in a calling for which he has 
more aptitude than inclination. Having to be 
a banker, he resolved to be a good banker ; but 
he would far rather have been somethingf else — 
a scholar, for instance, or a comic poet. At 
Geneva he was scholar enough to take a prize 
over the heads of lads mostly two years his 
senior. In Paris he was sufficiently a comic poet 

19 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

to write comic poetry, though he refused to 
publish it. "To have done so," he said, "would 
have affected my whole career. The reputation 
of a comic author has never been compatible 
with the serious dignity required from a Prime 
Minister." Countrymen of Canning cannot be 
expected to assent to that opinion. But it is 
possible — it is even probable — that Necker's light 
verse was not so good as Canning's, and in that 
case he was wise in suppressing it. 

It was as a clerk in Vernet's bank that he 
began his financial career. He was speedily pro- 
moted to be head clerk ; and Vernet, on retiring 
from business, showed his appreciation of his 
services by financing him as a partner of the 
Thelussons ; and Thelusson's, under his direc- 
tion, soon became the greatest banking-house 
in France. In this way he had already reached 
a great position when he made the acquaintance 
of Mademoiselle Suzanne Curchod. 

Mademoiselle Curchod had just taken a situa- 
tion as " companion " to Madame Vermenoux, 
a widow and a lady of fashion, who sometimes 
made her feel that she was not quite fashionable 
enough for the post. Steinlen, in his Life of 
Bonstetten, tells us how Madame Vermenoux 
sometimes snubbed her. " Go out of the room. 
Mademoiselle," she said to her, "and return, 
making another curtsey. I do not wish you to 
make me ashamed of you at Paris." Necker 
was, at the time, paying his addresses to Madame 

20 



Transferred Affections 

Vermenoux, and, somehow or other, it came 
about that he transferred his affections from the 
mistress to the companion. 

Naturally there are two versions of the story. 
The one is that the companion deliberately set 
herself to " cut out " her mistress ; the other that 
the mistress herself contrived the marriage in 
order to get rid of an unwelcome suitor. The 
latter view is maliciously stated in the Memoirs 
of the Baronne d'Oberkirch.^ 

" For my part, I did not like M. Necker. I was 
struck with his incredible likeness to Cagliostro, 
though he lacked Cagliostro's sparkling eyes and 
dazzling expression. He was, as it were, a con- 
strained Cagliostro, of stiff, unpleasant manners ; 
there was nothing agreeable about him except 
his determination to make himself agreeable.") 
Madame Necker is still worse. In spite of the 
high positions which she has occupied, she is a 
schoolmistress and nothing more. The daughter 
of a village pastor named Curchod, she was given 
an excellent education, from which she profits in 
a perverse kind of way. She is beautiful with- 
out being agreeable, and benevolent without 
making herself beloved. Her body, her mind, 
and her heart are all wanting in grace. God, 
before creating her, must have soaked her, in- 
side and out, in starch. She will never acquire 
the art of pleasing. To sum it up in a sentence, 
she can neither weep nor smile. Her father was 

^ An Alsatian lady. Her Memoirs are among our best sources 
of information concerning social conditions in Paris just before 
the Revolution. 

21 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

poor ; she set up a girls' school at Geneva, and 
was brought to Paris by Madame Vermenoux, 
who is well known for her beauty and her addic- 
tion to gallantry. This Madame de Vermenoux 
was on intimate terms with Abb6 Raynal, with 
M. de Marmontel, with other philosophers, and 
with M. Necker. The last-named bored her, 
and I am quite sure he would have bored me just 
as much. It occurred to her to get rid of him by 
marrying him to Mademoiselle Curchod. 

" ' They will bore each other so much,' she said, 
'that they will be provided with an occupation.* 

" They did not bore each other, but they bored 
all the rest of the world, worshipping each other, 
paying compliments to each other, burning incense 
to each other without cessation. Each became 
the other's thurifer. Madame Necker in par- 
ticular became the thurifer of her husband." 

The spite is here too frankly exhibited for the 
narrative to inspire much confidence ; but the 
truth, so far as one can spell it out, seems to be 
this : that Madame Vermenoux did really want 
to pass on M. Necker to her companion, but that 
the companion did not know it, and conscientiously 
believed herself to be poaching on her mistress's 
preserves. One infers that, in the first place, 
from the fact that the marriage was a secret 
one, and in the second place, from a passage 
in a letter from Madame Necker to Pastor 
Moultou : " I wish that she would not attribute 
our marriage to her own action. I am rather 
offended with her ; and my husband, who says I 

32 



A Happy Marriage 

am the only woman he ever loved, is annoyed at 
her speeches." 

Whatever the origin of the marriage, however, 
its result was happiness. To be happy, and yet 
to be well-conducted, was with Madame Necker 
almost an instinct. Her goal had always been a 
home and a high position in society. She had 
won it ; she was satisfied with it ; she adorned it. 
She had no craving for new sentimental sensa- 
tions — no restless need for a grand passion to fill 
an empty life. Platonic friendships, perhaps, — 
the appreciation of these appears in the corre- 
spondence with Thomas, and Gibbon, and others, 
— but decidedly no grand passions. That was to 
be the line of cleavage between the mother and 
the daughter : the mother, who had the Grassier 
parsonage and the Genevan Puritanism close 
behind her, and whose life was amply filled by 
her cares for her husband and her salon ; the 
daughter, removed by a generation from these 
pious and simple antecedents, beginning to live 
at a time when strange convulsions were shaking 
the foundations of a corrupt society, an ^migrde 
cut adrift from such moorings as a fixed place in 
any fatherland might have afforded — thrown back 
upon sentiment as the one reality which, incarnate 
in many shapes, could still make life possible and 
even tolerable. Our business here shall be with 
the fierce sentimental strivings of that tempestuous 
career. 



23 



CHAPTER III 

The grandeur of the Neckers — Madame Necker and her poor 
relations — Birth of a daughter — Her education in a salon — 
And in a garden — Necker in office — And out of office — A 
course of foreign travel — The purchase of Coppet — The 
place of exile. 

The Neckers grew in grandeur. M. Necker's 
Eloge de Colbert was "crowned" by the 
Academy; from 1768 he was the accredited 
diplomatic representative of Geneva at the Court 
of Versailles; in 1776 he was called to the 
direction of the French Exchequer. The in- 
creasing dignity is reflected in many of Madame 
Necker's letters ^ — especially in those which define 
her attitude towards her poor relations in the 
Canton of Vaud. 

She was very good to them, though they were 
very exacting. She paid children's school bills, 
and gave annuities to aunts. But when cousins 
propose to visit her — that is another matter. A 
certain Cousin Toton, it seems, was anxious to 
come. " Could I have the audacity," Madame 
Necker asks, "to make her change her name, 
and disavow my relationship to her? Even if 
I were willing to do so, would my husband and 
my servants keep my secret ? On the other 

^ Published in Etrennes HelvHiques in 1901. 
24 



Madame Necker's Poor Relations 

hand, how could I introduce her as my relation 
in a house frequented by persons of all ranks in 
society, and in which, to be appropriately dressed, 
she would have to spend at least a thousand 
French crowns a year ? To say nothing of her 
manners, her way of speaking, and a thousand 
other trifles which, without detracting from her 
real merit, would make the most unfortunate 
impression in a country in which people judge 
by appearances?" And Madame Necker begs 
her correspondent not to show Toton her letter, 
but to acquaint her with its contents, toning them 
down and making them as palatable as possibles 

The thing was done ; but Toton had to be 
admonished, in a further letter, for her unreason- 
able jealousy. 

" I am sure, from the knowledge I have of 
her character and her talents, that she would 
not have endured for six months the role which 
I am filling. She seems to imagine that, in 
marrying M. Necker, I have acquired the right 
— or almost so — of reducing him to a narrow 
life on a small income, and dispensing his fortune 
in accordance with my whims. 

** M. Necker, while leaving me the greatest 
liberty, most reasonably desires to satisfy his 
own tastes, to live with dignity, and to receive 
in his house a society which requires from me 
the greatest consideration and a kind of tact 
which I have much difficulty in acquiring. If 
I asked him to live differently, if I introduced 
excessive economies into his establishment, if I 

25 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

were cross and ill-tempered about such things, 
I should soon be an object of indifference to 
him — I might even say of dislike. A husband 
to whom, after the Supreme Being, one owes 
everything — a husband who enjoys considera- 
tion, who has cultivated tastes and a refined 
wit, cannot be treated as one would treat 
M. Puthod. I have told you, Madame, more than 
was necessary for the enlightenment of a mind 
so intelligent as yours. I am persuaded that 
your intelligence and your knowledge of men 
and things have, more than once, caused you to 
place yourself in my position ; but my cousin 
seems to me to be capable of holding only one 
idea in her head at a time." 

The argument seems reasonable enough, though 
the tone strikes one as excessively self-righteous. 
There is something in the letter, in fact, which 
helps to explain why the writer's Parisian friends 
were so fond of scoffing at her as "the school- 
mistress " — why she never really succeeded in 
becoming a popular exponent of the virtues 
which she practised and adorned — why Gibbon, 
on resuming his friendship with her, was obliged 
to "laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her 
to become a simple, reasonable Suissesse." Here, 
however, one can only briefly note its unconscious 
self-revelations, and must then pass on to record 
the birth of Madame Necker's only daughter. 

Anne- Louise -Germaine Necker was born in 
Paris on April 22, 1766, and was brought up in 
a salon. That summary may almost suffice. To 

26 



Education in a Salon 

draw the picture, one has little to do but to recite 
the names and imagine the illustrious bearers of 
them presenting themselves on Fridays : Diderot 
and d'Alembert, the Encyclopaedists, the Abbds 
Morellet, Raynal, and Galiani, Baron Grimm,^ 
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to be famous presently 
as the author of Paul et Virginie, Dr. Tronchin, 
the fashionable physician, M. de Marmontel, 
Madame Necker's platonic friend Thomas, MM. 
Saint- Lambert and Suard, Lord Stormont, "the 
handsome Englishman," and, on certain occasions, 
Gibbon and David Hume. In the midst of them, 
the little girl sat bolt upright on a high chair, 
listening, listening, listening. That early spell 
of silence, says a wit, lasted her for the rest of 
her life ; though it is surely an excess of cynicism 
to demand silence from those who are able to 
talk well. The time came too when she talked 
as well as listened; The celebrities drew her out, 
discussing all imaginable topics with the child, 
just as with a grown-up person. Marmontel 
wrote verses to her. Little essays which she 
wrote were circulated by Grimm, in his corre- 
spondence, in proof of her remarkable precocity. 

Then came illness — that vague, unclassifiable 
disturbance of the nerves which so often stands 
waiting for precocious genius on the threshold of 
maturity — an incomprehensible malady akin to 

^ The lover of Madame d'Epinay, and the originator of the 
Correspondence LitUraire — a circular letter of literary gossip to 
which German princes subscribed. 

27 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

that which overtook DisraeH after the writing of 
Vivian Grey, and sent him on his first foreign 
travels. Dr. Tronchin was called in — the same 
Dr. Tronchin who had dared to open the windows 
at the palace of Versailles. He decreed fresh 
air and idleness. The child had been living an 
unnatural life in a forcing-house. Her mother 
had been too zealous for her education. Let her 
go out into the garden and stay there. 

So Germaine Necker was sent to Saint-Ouen 
with her friend, Mademoiselle Huber ^ — to the 
great chagrin of her mother, who could not 
accompany her because of her social duties, and 
who was far too much of a pedant to understand 
that it may be good for a child to be left to grow 
up without the constant supervision of adults. 
"A life of poetry," writes her cousin and first 
biographer, Madame Necker de Saussure, 
" succeeded to a life of study, and her abundant 
energies found a more imaginative expression. 
She ran about in the shrubberies of Saint-Ouen 
with her friend ; and the two girls, dressed up as 
nymphs or muses, used to recite verses, or 
compose poems and dramas of all kinds, and 
to act them." The poems and stories which 
she liked best, says the same authority, were 
those which made her weep. We note the fact 
as the first fore-warning of the gift of tears, to 
be bestowed on her abundantly. 

^ Afterwards Madame Rilliet. She remained on terms of 
intimacy with Madame de Stael until the end. 

28 



Necker's Dismissal 

Anecdotes of her girlhood abound, and may 
be sought in the works of Dr. Stevens, Lady 
Blennerhassett, and M. d'Haussonville. They 
prove that she adored her father — a king of men 
to her, though to Gibbon only a " sensible, good- 
natured creature " ; that she respectfully accepted, 
rather than idolised, her mother ; that, in spite of 
the interruption of her studies, her precocity con- 
tinued to excite remark. Madame Necker, in fact, 
somewhat lost interest in a daughter whom, as she 
no longer educated her, she could no longer take 
pride in as "her work"; but M. Necker encouraged 
her, albeit checking her extravagances with gentle 
raillery. " To his incredible insight," she often 
said, " I owe the frankness of my character. . . . 
He stripped the mask from my affectations." 

The first public event that meant much to her 
was M. Necker's dismissal in 1781 from the 
office assigned to him in 1776; his policy of 
retrenchment being unpopular with influential 
persons who found their salaries reduced or their 
sinecures abolished. He justified himself in his 
famous Compte rendu sur les finances, and replied 
to Calonne's attack on the Compte rendu in the 
Press, but the day came when he was bidden to 
betake himself at least forty leagues from Paris. 
" An exile appeared to me," writes his daughter, 
" the most cruel act that could be committed. I 
exclaimed in despair when I heard of it. I could 
not conceive of a greater misfortune." 

Afterwards, it may be, looking back on the 

29 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

event, she could see in her father's misfortune the 
premonition of her own. The condemnation to 
reside at least forty leagues from Paris was to be, 
in her case, not only a trouble but a cause of 
trouble. Through it, she was to live as the 
sensitive plant uprooted, and to be driven to seek 
sentimental solace with characteristic desperation. 
She could not be expected to foresee that then, 
however ; and exile for the moment meant only 
retirement to a country estate at Marolles, an 
excursion to the watering-place of Plombieres for 
her mother's health, a visit to Buffon, the 
naturalist, at Montbard, and a course of foreign 
travel. Lausanne, among other places, was re- 
visited. " I saw there," writes Bonstetten, who 
came to see them, " the future Madame de Stael, in 
all the charm of youth, of intellect, and of coquetry." 
They met other old friends there — many of them 
fugitives from the justice of Louis xvi. Gibbon 
was living there, and his picture of the company 
in a letter to Lord Sheffield is like a paragraph 
from a society paper. 

*'A few weeks ago I was walking on our 
terrace with M. Tissot, our celebrated physician ; 
M. Mercier, the author of the Tableau de Paris; the 
Abbe Raynal ; Monsieur, Madame, and Made- 
moiselle Necker; the Abbe de Bourbon, a natural 
son of Lewis the Fifteenth ; the Hereditary Prince 
of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and a 
dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons." 

It was about this time, too, — his daughter being 
30 



The Purchase of Coppet 

then eighteen years of age, — that M. Necker 
bought the property of Coppet from his old 
partner, Thelusson, paying for it 500,000 livres in 
French money, together with about one-third of 
that sum, in taxes due on the transfer, to the 
Bernese Government. 

The house and grounds have hardly been 
altered, if at all, since the day when the banished 
banker — not feeling the less an exile because he 
was in his own and his wife's native country — took 
possession of them. Thousands of trippers have 
trooped there under guidance ; most of them, per- 
haps, gaping and wondering why they have been 
brought there, and what are these stories that 
their guide is telling them in a strange tongue, so 
hard to follow when it is spoken fast ; a few of 
them — a very few in these personally conducted 
days — silently moved by the many memories 
which the scene evokes. 

One enters a spacious courtyard through a 
vaulted gate, passing the old tower containing the 
"archives" which hold so many secrets, still 
only partially revealed. One climbs a broad 
staircase, and notes that the walls are embellished 
with armorial bearings — for M. Necker, as we 
have seen, shared the Swiss delight in these 
decorative links with the past, and was easily 
persuaded of his personal title to them. One 
passes through bedchambers severely luxurious 
in eighteenth-century style. One walks through 
a French window on to a balcony, and looks down 

31 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

over a garden, and out over the blue lake to the 
dark forested hills of Savoy. One lingers longest 
in the large drawing-room, with its portraits and 
other relics of the past, inviting slow inspection ; 
and the most interesting moment is when the 
guide — that decorous and distinguished family 
retainer — points to one particular miniature, and 
says, in tones suggesting that the matter really is of 
no importance : "M. Benjamin Constant — homme 
de lettres qui visitait le chateau de temps en temps." 
For then one knows, or may know if one cares to, 
that he has touched, though lightly, and as if he 
would hush it up, the fringe of the great love story 
which gives a visit to Coppet its real interest. 

Still thinking of that love story, one escapes 
from guidance, and passes out through a gateway 
to roam at leisure in the park. Here are straight 
avenues of trees — " her friends who watched over 
her destiny," as Madame de Stael was to call 
them. Here is a spacious central meadow, 
bordered by a stream spanned by rustic bridges. 
Here are benches to sit down upon ; here flowers 
grow, and here a fountain bubbles. Sylvan, 
Arcadian — those are the epithets that come to 
mind. One expects shepherds and shepherdesses, 
as in a Watteau picture ; and one knows what real 
shepherds and shepherdesses have here disported 
themselves — what eclogues they have chanted — 
how they have loved, and quarrelled, and been 
reconciled. We shall meet them, and tell of their 
loves and quarrels presently. 

32 



The Place of Exile 

Truly a gilded exile — a place to make one in 
love with exile, if that could ever be — but an exile, 
none the less, and therefore in some sense bitter 
to those who came to dwell in it. For 
Necker was to come there to die, expelled first 
by an ungrateful king, and then by an ungrateful 
people — the pilot who had failed to weather the 
storm. And Necker's daughter was to come 
there to live otherwise than as she wished — to feel 
herself not a flower duly planted in the garden, 
but an uprooted flower flung upon the grass — a 
mere spectator of the drama in which she wished 
to be an actor — thrown back upon her passions, 
and striving to make some sort of a life for herself 
somehow by their treacherous aid. 



33 



CHAPTER IV 

Mademoiselle Necker's early writings — Her secrets revealed in 
her short stories — Her love for General Guibert — The match- 
makers at work — Marriage to the Baron de Stael-Holstein. 

The real exile, of which the journey to Switzerland 
was, in some sense, a foretaste, was still, however, 
to be delayed for a good many years. Necker 
was back again in Paris presently, and Madame 
Necker again had her salon there, though its 
character was somewhat altered, and the 
philosophers gave way to the politicians. The 
ex-Minister was a personage, though out of favour 
with the Court. Moderate reformers rallied round 
him, and his ultimate recall to office might be 
foreseen. His daughter had reached a marriage- 
able age, and a husband had to be found for 
her. 

Mademoiselle Necker had not inherited her 
mother's beauty, though even that beauty, if we 
may trust the judgment of a modern taste upon 
the collection of portraits at Coppet, was much 
exaggerated by complimentary report. At the 
most she possessed only the beautd du Diable, 
and her chief charm was in her vivacity and 
intelligence. It would have been premature to 
say of her as yet, as was said afterwards, that she 

34 



Mile Necker's Early Writings 

combined the heart of a woman with the brain of 
a man, but the tendencies which were presently 
to call forth that verdict must already have been 
discernible. She had begun to write, though not 
to publish. We have seen how her childish 
essays — mostly "characters" of her friends and 
acquaintances — were copied and exhibited by 
Grimm. At the time of her father's disgrace, 
when she was only fifteen, she delighted him with 
an anonymous letter of sympathy, the authorship 
of which he speedily divined. A little later she 
wrote comedies, tragedies, short stories. It is 
worth while to glance back at the writings, not 
critically, but in order to satisfy ourselves upon 
what plane of ideas this precocious child was 
moving. 

We need not wonder at finding the note 
melancholy and even morbid. That is the note 
of youth, and especially of the youth of the North, 
when artistically gifted and able to stand aloof 
from the battle of life. The girl had more 
German than French blood in her veins, and 
morbid literary influences were prevalent. The 
sorrows of Werther had temporarily unbalanced 
some of the sanest minds — the mind, for instance, 
of Ramond de Carbonniere, subsequently to be 
known as the hardy pioneer of the Pyrenees, who 
made his ddbut as the author of a drama relating 
the adventures of a youth whose way out of an 
impasse of the affections was to wander over the 
world in disguise and finally to blow out his 

35 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

brains amid the ruins of an ancient castle. In 
sprinkling her pages with death in many a shape, 
Mademoiselle Necker was only swimming, or 
drifting, with the literary tide. Her problems 
and her solutions were equally taken from the 
common stock ; she added nothing to it. 

More significant, in view of her tender age, are 
the sentiments which transpire with regard to love 
and marriage. She is already thinking of love 
as something apart from marriage — something 
which has as little to do with marriage as Lord 
Melbourne considered that religion ought to have 
to do with private life. In Sophie ou les sentimens 
secrets, we see love threatening to break up 
domestic peace. Sophie, the orphan girl, is in 
love with her guardian, who is the husband of her 
dearest friend. In Adelaide et Theodore we have 
a heroine who goes to her marriage as to her 
doom, not loving her husband, and sure that she 
will never love him, lamenting the end of all 
sentimental things. 

'* Adelaide was in despair. Her romantic dream 
of happiness was destroyed. She resisted longer 
than might have been expected from a girl of her 
age ; but, at a ball, consent was at last wrung from 
her. On the morrow of the fatal day she wrote 
a letter full of melancholy to her aunt. ' There 
is no more hope for me,' she said. * They have 
robbed me of my future. The happiness of loving 
is for ever forbidden to me. I shall die without 
knowing what life is. Nothing that can happen 

36 



Love Apart from Marriage 

can concern me any more. All things are one to 
me.' A few days later she wrote : * I must let 
my senses be dazed. I must let myself be caught 
in the whirlwind of life. For me there is neither 
happiness nor unhappiness any longer. I can no 
more take pleasure in dreaming. I yield to the 
torrent. I love whatever makes the time pass 
faster.' " 

And then follows the story of the marriage, 
with a striking expression of disdain for the 
unhappy husband. The young bride is the queen 
of the Parisian salons, and yet — " In the midst of 
her transports of joy at the fUes and her success 
in them, Adelaide was always kind to her husband, 
for she reflected that even fools have their 
vanity." 

The passages are instructive ; for the emotion 
and the psychology discovered in them were not 
wholly derived from books. Dates settle that. 
The story, though not printed until 1795, was 
written in 1 786 — in the year, that is to say, of the 
author's own marriage. It seems wrong to say, 
therefore, with Madame Necker de Saussure and 
Dr. Stevens, that "the chief importance of the 
little volume is in its introduction, which is a 
critical essay of remarkable ability on Fictitious 
Literature, written at a later date." Its import- 
ance is as a bitter cry, uttered either on the eve 
or on the morrow of a wedding, and a piece of 
evidence, strangely overlooked, determining for 
us the frame of mind in which Mademoiselle 

37 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Necker entered upon her union with the Baron 
de Stael- Holstein. It is useless, after reading it, 
any longer to profess ignorance of her sentiments. 
The proof of them is there, and we have no need 
of any further witness. The bride who, not 
being a professional writer of fiction, wrote like 
that, was pouring out her soul upon the paper, 
and telling her secret to future generations. She 
was in love, indeed, but not with the Baron de 
Stael- Holstein. 

The man whom she loved was General Guibert, 
— a handsome, plausible soldier, with literary as 
well as military talents, — best known to the world 
as the suitor who seduced the affections of 
d'Alembert's mistress. Mademoiselle Lespinasse, 
and then deserted her and broke her heart. She 
admitted as much to Miss Burney at Mickle- 
ham ; and there is corroborative evidence in that 
Eloge of General Guibert, written by her at the 
time of his death, in 1790, locked up in her 
desk for the remainder of her life, and published 
posthumously by her son. 

He must have been a worthless, albeit in his 
way a dazzling, man. His treatment of Made- 
moiselle Lespinasse was heartless, and worse. He 
refused to return her letters when she asked for 
them ; he left them lying about for all the world 
to see ; when he did, under pressure, return some 
of them, letters from other ladies were carelessly 
included in the parcel. But Madame de Stael 
was not to know anything about that. She only 

38 



Panegyric on Guibert 

knew that she had felt the fascination ; so that 
the Eloge, in form a panegyric such as might 
have been pronounced in a solemn session of the 
Academy of Letters, was in essence a lamentation 
to which it might indeed have been embarrassing 
for the wife of the Swedish Ambassador publicly 
to subscribe her name. 

•' Ah, who," she cries, " will give me back those 
long talks, so rich in imagination and ideas ? It 
was not by weeping with you that he consoled 
you for your troubles, but no one did more to 
soften your sorrows, and to help you to bear 
the weight of your reflections, by teaching you 
to look at them in all their aspects. He was 
not a friend for every moment, or for every 
day. His thoughts, and perhaps his personality, 
distracted his attention from other people. But, 
to say nothing of the great services which he 
would render you — services of which too many 
profess themselves capable, and for which you 
could always depend upon M. de Guibert — his 
whole soul, when he spoke to you, seemed to be 
yours." 

That is the writing of a woman who has loved 
the man of whom she writes — whose emotion has 
thrown even her sentences into confusion ; and 
there is also evidence of a kind of the warmth 
of Guibert's own feelings. Madame de Stael, 
in this same Eloge, speaks of his "profound 
admiration for my father." He had no such 
admiration for the father, but affected it for the 

39 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

daughter's sake. His real sentiments about 
Necker are recorded in his own journal : 
" Received from Paris the reply to M. Necker's 
book. I was thoroughly satisfied with it. The 
author proves to demonstration the contradictions 
into which M. Necker has fallen, and the entire 
failure of his arguments to lead to any conclusion." 

There could be no question here of marriage, 
however, since General Guibert already had a 
wife — the lady who took such interest, not to 
say such pride, in his extra-conjugal amours that 
she actually published the letters which he had 
refused to return to Mademoiselle Lespinasse. 
The Neckers, moreover, were Protestants, and 
a Protestant husband had therefore to be sought, 
and was not easily to be found in Paris. The 
story of the attempt to arrange a match with 
William Pitt is well known, though Pitt's alleged 
reply that he was "already married to his 
country" rests upon very dubious authority. 
The name of the Swedish Count Fersen was 
also suggested, though the Neckers can hardly 
have been ignorant of the scandalous report 
which represented him as the lover of Marie- 
Antoinette. In fact, all the negotiations for the 
disposal of the hand of the great heiress were 
conducted to their conclusion in favour of the 
Baron de Stael-Holstein with a slow deliberation 
which can fairly be called cold-blooded. 

The bridegroom frankly wanted the dowry. 
Practically nothing but the desire for the dowry 

40 



Match-Makers at Work 

appears in the correspondence — it contains no 
single reference to any other of the attractions 
which the bride possessed. The Baron de Stael- 
Holstein "played up to" the dowry for seven 
years — from 1779, when Mademoiselle Necker 
was only thirteen, and when the Ambassador at 
that date representing Sweden reported to Stock- 
holm that he was "in a pitiful condition, at the 
end of his resources, and without a penny in 
his pocket." The mutual friend through whom 
he approached the Neckers was Madame de 
Boufflers,^ who did not like Mademoiselle Necker, 
but did like M. de Stael, thought that the heiress 
would be a *' catch" for him, and was anxious 
to do him a good turn. Necker, on his part, 
appears in the transaction as showing equally 
little regard for the inclinations of his daughter, 
but lays down hard conditions, like a king 
arranging the marriage of a princess. - If His 
Swedish Majesty will assure M. de Stael the 
Swedish Embassy in perpetuity, and will make 
him a Count, and will bestow upon him the Order 
of the Polar Star, etc. etc. etc., then he will give 
his consent to the union. And if not, not. 

So the thing drags on. The proposal is the 
subject of interminable letters — most of them of 
a painfully sordid character. At times M. de 
Stael is in despair. He does not know how to 
keep the wolf from the door through all these 
long delays. " The hopes," he writes to Gustavus, 

^ Wife of the Governor of Senegal. 
41 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" which your Majesty permitted me to form have 
vanished like a cloud of smoke. I am in terrible 
embarrassment, and I do not know how to save 
myself from the precipice unless your Majesty 
deigns," etc. etc.; and Madame de Boufflers 
writes on his behalf that he has, on the strength 
of his expectations, incurred debts to the extent 
of 200,000 francs. Necker, however, remains 
obdurate, and insists on his conditions, and at 
last Gustavus is willing to treat him as a rival 
potentate, and to make terms with him. Every- 
thing was arranged over Mademoiselle Necker's 
head. She was quite unquestionably sacrificed 
on the altar of her father's ambition, though her 
devotion to him blinded her, at least partially, 
to the fact. The marriage was celebrated on 
January 14, 1786. To see how it was regarded 
by those who had brought it about — or at all 
events by the bridegroom's friends — we have 
only to turn to a letter which Madame de 
Boufflers wrote to the King of Sweden almost 
immediately after the event. 

"I hope," she says, "that M. de Stael will be 
happy, but I do not expect it. His wife, it is 
true, has been brought up in honourable and 
virtuous principles, but she has no experience 
of the world and no knowledge of the con- 
venances^ and is so spoiled and so opinionated 
that it will be difficult to make her perceive her 
deficiencies. She is much too imperious and self- 
willed. I have never, in any position in society, 

42 



Madame de Boufflers' Cynicism 

seen such self-assurance in a woman of her age. 
She argues about everything, and, clever though 
she is, one could count twenty lapses from good 
form for one good thing that she says. The 
Ambassador dares not speak to her about it for 
fear of alienating her in the early days of his 
married life. For my own part, I exhort him 
to begin by being firm with her, for I know 
that the whole course of a married life is often 
determined by the beginning that a man makes. 
For the rest, her father's friends praise her to the 
skies, his enemies find her ridiculous in a thousand 
ways, while those who are impartial in the matter 
render justice to her intelligence, but complain 
that she talks too much and is more brilliant 
than sensible or tactful. If she were not so 
spoiled by the incense burnt in her honour, I 
should try to give her a little advice." 

This, from the chief contriver of the marriage, 
is cynicism open and unabashed. From 
Necker there naturally is no such avowal. He 
probably confused his daughter's interests with 
his own, being that sort of self-centred but well- 
meaning man, and of an age to regard grandeur 
as a more tangible thing than love. Of the 
bride's view of the transaction we have had our 
glimpse in our extract from her short story ; and 
the same document reads very like a declaration 
of her plans for dealing with the situation. She 
would seek distraction ; she would live her own 
life. But she would remember that fools have 
their vanity, and would be kind. 

43 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

That, at any rate, whether as the result of 
deliberate intention or of accident and circum- 
stance, was pretty much how things fell out. 
Madame de Stael was kind to her husband, 
perhaps, even to the point of helping him to 
write his despatches. But the seeds of estrange- 
ment were already sown, and were soon to 
germinate. The marriage failed ; and though 
there exists nowhere any full record of the 
failure, we can see how complete it was from 
an occasional passage alike in Madame de. 
Stael's letters and in her published writings. 
** For you," she writes to Rosalie de Constant, 
whom we shall meet again, — " for you who have 
neither a husband to fear nor children to look 
after there remains a future " ; and in one of 
her earliest essays, De V Influence des Passions 
sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations, there 
is a strikingly sad comment on the marriage tie. 

" It is the tie of all others in which it is least 
possible to obtain the romantic happiness of the 
heart. To keep the peace in this relationship 
it is necessary to exercise a self-control and 
to make sacrifices which cause this kind of 
existence to approximate much more nearly to 
the pleasures of virtue than to the joys of 
passion." 

This is a confession, if an informal one, meant 
only for those who could read between the lines ; 
and it would be an idle enterprise to attempt too 

44 



"Robbed of her Future" 

carefully to apportion praise and blame. All 
that one can profitably say is this : that M. de 
Stael was a wooden-headed man and a gambler, 
who had married for money, and for no other 
reason ; and that, when such a man marries a 
young woman who is both brilliant and fascinating 
— even if she be not beautiful — the first steps on 
the road that leads to disaster have been taken, 
and the wife must be judged at least as leniently 
as the husband, when the hour of the catastrophe 
arrives. 

Let us, then, apply that rule. The proximate 
causes of the dissension between Monsieur and 
Madame de Stael will then seem to matter little, 
while its ultimate causes will be clear. We have 
only to turn back to the story of Adelaide et 
Theodore to find them foreshadowed. There we 
have read the lamentation of the girl who was 
" robbed of her future " by her marriage. Now, 
at a later stage, we see the girl trying to 
win back what she has lost, resolved to dream 
her romantic dream, whoever says her nay, 
denying the right of parent or husband or priest 
to slam the door on sentiment for ever, asserting 
her claim to live her life and to find happiness 
where she can — claiming especially to find happi- 
ness in love, since love always appears to her as 
the highest manifestation of virtue, even when 
she must trample on the world's conventions to 
attain it. 



45 



CHAPTER V 

Necker recalled to office — Dismissed — Recalled again after the 
fall of the Bastille — Fails — Resigns — Retires to Coppet — 
Madame de Stael's essay on the works of Rousseau — Infer- 
ences that can be drawn from it — Madame de Stael's salon — 
Description of it by Gouverneur Morris — Progress of the 
Revolution — Madame de Stael saves her friends, and then 
leaves Paris. 

We shall see how Madame de Stael lived her 
life during the years of the Revolution, already, at 
the time of her marriage, almost in sight ; but we 
must first see how her father lived his. 

We left Necker out of office, and he was to 

remain out of office for some time longer ; but 

his successors were making a sad mess of the 

national finances, and his recall to cope with 

the emergency became more and more obviously 

inevitable. Calonne was a failure, and had to go. 

There followed in succession M. de Fourqueux 

and M. de Villedeuil, giving place in their turn to 

Lom^nie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, 

afterwards Archbishop of Sens. He lasted for 

eighteen months, and then the King sent for 

Necker. The populace cheered him, and burnt 

the Archbishop in effigy ; and the funds rose 

thirty per cent, in a single day. That was in 

August 1788. The assembling of the States- 

46 



Necker is Recalled, but Fails 

General followed, and Necker supposed himself 
to have succeeded as the people's Minister. " As 
Malebranche saw all things in God," said the wit, 
** so M. Necker sees all things in Necker." There 
was a day when the people shouted for him, and 
carried him home in triumph. His enemies then 
intrigued against him, and the King dismissed 
him, bidding him leave Paris quietly to avoid 
disturbances. He did so, and the reply of the 
people was to burn the Bastille. The King 
accepted the intimation, and recalled him. The 
couriers despatched in haste overtook him at 
Basle, and he drove back hailed as the saviour 
of France. 

That was in August 1789 ; and it was already 
too late for France to be saved otherwise than by 
fire and sword. The emigration had begun, and 
the tide of Sans-culottism, presently to become 
Terrorism, was flowing. In October came the 
march of the women to Versailles and the bringing 
of the King and Queen to Paris. Necker could 
not control a mob that did things of that sort, nor 
could he or any man straighten out the finances 
of a country in which such things happened. 
For that achievement credit was needed, and 
revolutionary France had none ; and, as Necker 
could not work miracles, he found his popularity 
on the wane. Only a little while since, the 
question had been when he would be sent for ; 
now the question was when he would be dismissed. 
He did not wait to be dismissed, but retired, and 

47 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

had trouble in getting away. At Arcis-sur-Aube 
his carriage was stopped, and he had to appeal 
to the National Assembly to give special orders 
that he should be suffered to depart in peace. 
So he went into exile at Coppet, where he wrote 
pamphlets in vindication of his policy, and where 
he presently felt himself insecure. Fearing a 
raid and an attempt to kidnap him, he appealed 
to the Bernese Government for permission to 
maintain at Coppet a guard of fifty armed men 
at his own cost. The permission, for whatever 
reason, was refused, and he went to live at 
RoUe — probably in the country house of his 
brother, Louis Necker de Germany, on the 
outskirts of that town — until times should be 
quieter. 

Outwardly, during that period, Madame de 
Stael's life was much wrapped up in her father's 
— certainly far more in his than in her husband's. 
She was with Necker when he drove to Ver- 
sailles to resume office in August 1788, and on 
the day of the meeting of the States-General in 
May 1789, when Madame de Montmorin pre- 
dicted to her " frightful disasters to France and 
to us."^ She followed him to Brussels, when the 
King bade him leave France, in July of the same 
year ; and she came back with him when he was 
recalled and conducted in triumph to the Hotel 

^ The prophecy in her case was fulfilled. Her husband perished 
in the September massacres. She and one of her sons were 
guillotined. 

48 



Literary Career Begins 

de Ville, with beating drums and blaring bands 
and the waving of flags captured at the storming 
of the Bastille. She hurried to him at Versailles, 
by a circuitous route, on the day on which 
Theroigne de Mericourt led the women of Paris 
to the Palace. She hastened to visit him at 
Coppet in September 1790. Of her relations 
with M. de Stael at the time we know next to 
nothing, except that she bore him a son four and 
a half years after her marriage. Perhaps we may 
infer something from the fact that he is almost 
the only one of her intimate male acquaintances 
to whom her correspondence contains no affec- 
tionate reference. In her most intimate letters he 
is always " M. de Stael" — there is no departure 
from that formal style. Evidently they began 
early to go their separate ways : ^ he losing his 
money — or rather her money — at the card-table, 
and she dazzling the salons by her talk. 

It was in these years, however, — the years of 
the calm that preceded the revolutionary storm, — 
that her literary career began. An edition of 
twenty copies of her Lettres sur les Ecrits et le 
Caractere dej. J. Rousseau was published in 1788. 
" By this accident," she wrote in a " Second 
Preface," in 18 14, "I was drawn into the literary 
career " ; and she proceeded to speak of the 
consolations which she had derived from the 

^ M. de Stael had a natural son, and also appears to have been 
on terms of intimacy with the actress Mile Clairon, but not much 
is known on this branch of the subject. 
D 49 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

pursuit of it throughout the course of an unhappy- 
life. From the first she wrote as one who enjoyed 
writing — who wrote because her thoughts were 
secrets that she could not keep. That is why 
what she wrote is nearly always interesting 
though not often valuable. This particular essay, 
indeed, has little literary or critical importance. 
It takes no broad views, and has much of the 
stiffness of a scholastic exercise. But the person- 
ality of the writer flashes out in it now and again. 
The biographer, reading between the lines of it, 
can see of what Madame de Stael was thinking 
as a young married woman of two-and-twenty. 

Especially are her thoughts disclosed in the 
chapter on " La nouvelle Heloise." She evidently 
saw in the case of Madame de Wolmar an 
anticipation of her own. She seems to be telling 
us by implication how her own marriage has been 
brought about. Some may think, she says, that 
Madame de Wolmar, as she did not love her 
husband, should not have married him ; but — 

" How miserable the girl who imagines that 
she has the courage to resist her father! His 
right, his wishes may be forgotten when he is 
far away — the passion of the moment effaces 
all recollections. But a father on his knees, 
pleading his own cause ! His power increased 
by his voluntary dependence on her will ! His 
unhappiness in conflict with her own! His 
entreaties when she expected him to compel ! 
What a spectacle is that! It suspends love 

50 



Significant Passages 

itself. A father who speaks like a friend, who 
appeals at once to nature and the heart, is the 
sovereign of our souls, and can obtain whatever 
he desires from us." 

Here clearly we have something more than 
the critical reflections of a reviewer ; and there 
presently follows a passage not less personal and 
significant on the unhappiness of the lot of women 
thus obliged to marry without love. 

" They need much strength of mind. Their 
passions and their destiny are in conflict in a 
country where fortune often imposes upon women 
the obligation never to love, and where, more to 
be pitied than those pious women who consecrate 
themselves to their God, they have to accord all 
the rights of passion and deny themselves all 
the pleasures of sentiment. Must they not 
have a very strong sense of duty if they are to 
walk alone in the world, and to die without 
ever having been first in the thoughts of some 
other being, and, above all, without ever having 
fastened their own affections upon an object 
which they can love without remorse ? " 

There again, we may be sure, the writer is 
according us a glimpse at the secrets of her 
soul ; while a third passage, not less significant 
to the biographer, is that in which Madame de 
Stael pities Rousseau's heroine because she lives 
in the quiet country, and not in " this whirlwind 
of the world which can make one forget one's 
husband and one's lover both." That outburst, 

51 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

at any rate, hardly arose out of the subject under 
discussion, and can only be read as a confession 
wrung" from the writer's heart. Did M. de 
Stael, one wonders, ever read this first book of 
his wife's? If he read it, did he understand? 
If he understood, did he care ? 

It is impossible to say, though one pictures 
him as too dense a man to understand that sort 
of thing unless the explanation, with all the dots 
on all the i's, were actually thrust under his 
nose. But there can be little question that his 
wife was thinking a good deal more of herself 
than of Madame de Wolmar when she wrote 
the phrase about "the whirlwind of the world." 
She was caught up in the eddies of that whirl- 
wind from the first — a whirlwind that was both 
political and social, and that whirled faster and 
more furiously as the years went by, and one 
revolutionary force after another was unloosed. 
The life of excitement certainly helped her to 
forget her husband. As for her lover — or lovers 
— that is a different matter. Guibert, indeed, as 
it would seem, lost ground in her thoughts ; her 
early attachment to him declining into a senti- 
mental memory. But there were others. There 
exists a letter in which she wrote to M. de 
Gerando : " The three men whom I loved best 
after I was nineteen or twenty " — after her 
marriage, that is to say — "were N., T., and M." ; 
and the names for which these initials stand are 
those of M. de Narbonne, M. de Talleyrand, 

52 



Position in Society 

and Mathieu de Montmorency. We shall see 
presently what services she rendered to each of 
them ; but first we must see what was her 
position, at this period, in Parisian Society. 

It was a position which she had, at first, to 
fight for. She was not, as the Germans would 
say, "born." She had something less than the 
manners of a grande dame. There were 
those among the old noblesse who wished to 
make her feel her deficiencies. One gathers 
that, and also, at the same time, gathers some 
indication of the matters at issue between Madame 
de Stael and her husband, from the account of 
her presentation at Court given in the Memoirs 
of Madame d'Oberkirch. 

" She has had little success," we read. " All 
the men found her ugly, awkward, and, above 
all, artificial. She did not know how to behave, 
and felt very much out of her element in the 
midst of the elegance of Versailles. M. de Stael, 
on the contrary, is exceedingly handsome, and 
the best of company. His manners are very 
distinguished, and he did not appear to be very 
proud of his wife. . . . The Genevan appeared 
underneath the woman of talent, and — especially 
— ^underneath the Ambassadress." 

That was the view of the Opposition, as 
expressed by its most spiteful representative. 
Madame de Stael conquered her place in Society 
in spite of it, partly by her force of character 
and her brilliant conversation — partly because 

53 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

her salon was on the winning side, and she was 
in a position to be useful to her friends — partly 
also because, as the Revolution ran its course, the 
beginning of the emigration removed her social 
rivals. From 1788 onwards, therefore, her salon 
became more and more the centre alike of social 
life and of political intrigue. 

It was an exciting, but not the less a gay and 
festive time. The Terror was not yet in sight. 
The King had not yet been deposed and 
degraded to the style of Citizen Louis Capet. 
Members of the old families were still governing 
the country in his name. The conditions were 
not to be of long duration, but while they lasted 
Madame de Stael was able to help her friends. 
She helped Talleyrand by writing a State paper 
which he signed. She helped M. de Narbonne 
by procuring him the office of Minister of War. 
Then, as always, her notion of friendship was 
to pull wires for her friends' advantage — not 
quietly and unobtrusively, but openly and 
ostentatiously, as if she were pealing the tocsin. 
We have a choice of memoirs from which to 
draw ourselves the picture. Perhaps we shall see 
it best through the impartial eyes of Gouverneur 
Morris, the American Minister, who had no 
spite to vent, but only a curiosity to gratify, and 
who saw what there was to be seen from the 
detached point of view of a stranger. 

Morris landed in France in January 1789. In 
March we find him dining with M. Necker, who 

54 



The First Salon of Paris 

*' has the look and manner of the counting-house," 
and there making the acquaintance of Madame 
de Stael, who "seems to be a woman of sense 
and somewhat masculine in her character, but 
has very much the appearance of a chamber- 
maid." It is not until September — after the 
fall of the Bastille, and Necker's banishment and 
dramatic recall — that the acquaintance develops. 
Madame de Stael draws Morris out ; and he 
fancies that she is inspecting him "with that 
look which, without being what Sir John Falstaff 
calls the 'leer of invitation,' amounts to the same 
thing." That, however, one imagines, was only 
his vanity, and he admits that he was given no 
opportunity of demonstrating "what can be 
effected by the native of the New World who 
has left one of his legs behind." Their relations 
continue to be friendly ; and his accounts of the 
receptions at her salon are frequent and graphic. 
For instance : — 

" Quite the first salon of Paris at this time was 
that over which Madame de Stael presided. Her 
regular Tuesday evening supper, when not more 
than a dozen or fifteen covers were laid and her 
chosen friends were admitted into the little salon, 
the chaTfibre ardente, was the great feature of the 
week. Here, the candles extinguished to heighten 
the effect, the Abb6 Delille declaimed his ' Cata- 
combs de Rome,' and here Clermont-Tonnerre 
submitted to the criticism of his friends his dis- 
course before delivering it in public. Near the 

55 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

chimney Necker stood, entertaining the Bishop 
of Autun, who smiled but avoided talking. Here 
was to be found the Duchesse de Lauzun, of all 
women the most gentle and timid ; and in the 
midst stood the hostess, in her favourite attitude 
before the fire, with her hands behind her back, 
a large, leonine woman, with few beauties and 
no grace of gesture. She nevertheless animated 
the salon by her masculine attitude and powerful 
conversation. De Narbonne is of course with 
Madame de Stael this evening." 

Generally the conversation is of politics, but 
sometimes it is of literature. As late as April 
1 79 1, when the times were really beginning to 
be revolutionary, Morris hears Madame de Stael 
read the assemblage her tragedy Montmorenci^ 
and remarks that "she writes much better than 
she reads." Over and over again we find her 
name coupled with that of M. de Narbonne ; over 
and over again he is described as "her lover 
en titre''' — once in a despatch to Washington 
in which we get a glimpse of an interesting 
jealousy. 

"In the beginning of the Revolution he [M. 
de Narbonne], great anti-Neckerist though the 
lover en titre of Madame de Stael, M. Necker's 
daughter, was not a little opposed to the Revolu- 
tion, and there was afterwards some coldness 
between him and the Bishop [Talleyrand], partly 
on political accounts, and partly because he (in 
common with the rest of the world) believed the 
Bishop to be too well with his mistress. By the 

56 



Reminiscence of a Dinner Party 

bye, she tells me that it is not true, and of course 
I, who am a charitable man, believe her." 

The subject, however, v/as not one to be 
discussed only behind Madame de Stael's back. 
It could be referred to in conversation both with 
herself and with her husband. So much we 
gather from a reminiscence of a dinner party at 
Necker's house — a reminiscence the more interest- 
ing because it gives us one of our rare glimpses 
of M. de Stael's view of a situation not particularly 
flattering to his amour-propre. First it is : — 

*' I go to-day to dine at M. Necker's, and place 
myself next to Madame de Stael, and as our 
conversation grows animated, she desires me 
to speak English, which her husband does not 
understand. Afterwards, in looking round the 
table, I observe in him much emotion. I tell 
her that he loves her distractedly, which she says 
she knows, and that it renders her miserable. 
Condole with her a little on her widowhood, 
the Chevalier de Narbonne being absent in 
F ranche- Comtd " 

And then : — 

*' After dinner I seek a conversation with the 
husband, which relieves him. He inveighs 
bitterly against the manners of this country, and 
the cruelty of alienating a wife's affections. He 
says that women here are more corrupt in their 
minds and hearts than in any other way. I 
regret with him on general grounds that pro- 
stration of morals which unfits them for good 

57 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

government. Hence he concludes, and I believe 
truly, that I shall not contribute towards making 
him uncomfortable." 

Whence it would appear that M. de Stael, 
having married a woman of genius for her money, 
had already begun to realise the price that he 
must pay. He made no clamorous public pro- 
tests — that was hardly the fashion of the time. 
He did not even meet scandal with scandal to 
any great extent, but accepted the inevitable, and 
effaced himself for fear of ridicule. One con- 
jectures that his vanity was more deeply wounded 
than his affections, and that he found more con- 
solation at the card-table than he admitted. 

Meanwhile, however, the Revolution was pro- 
gressing with giant strides. The men whom 
Madame de Stael had advanced by her influence 
found their heads in danger ; the most that her 
influence could now do for them was to save their 
lives. It was good to be her friend in those days, 
and not necessary to be her lover in order to 
have her help. Her courage was heroic and 
her energy admirable ; and if she was proud of 
her power over the mob, she was well entitled 
to her pride. On the eve of the September 
massacres, she, a young matron of six-and-twenty, 
forced her way into the Hotel de Ville, and 
rescued Lally-Tollendal and Jaucourt from the 
clutches of the executioners. Over M. de Nar- 
bonne she threw the aegis of ambassadorial sacro- 
sanctity, hiding him in her house, and defying 

58 



The Real Beginning of Exile 

the mob to search for him, until he could be 
got away to London with a false passport. Not 
until that was done — not until the September 
massacres were in progress — did she apply for 
her own passport and make her own retreat. 

There were still difficulties to be overcome. 
The mob assailed her carriage, and would have 
pillaged her luggage, had not Santerre — the 
same Santerre whose drummers were to drown 
the dying speech of Louis xvi. — sat on the coach- 
man's box defending her. Tallien,^ however, 
escorted her past the Paris barriers ; and she 
drove post haste, not to her husband who was 
in Holland, but to join her father and mother 
at Rolle. " Switzerland is in mourning," writes 
Madame Necker in a letter dated September 9. 
** The Ambassadress arrived the day before 
yesterday, bringing the terrible news of the 
2nd, and the story of all her personal sufferings." 
This was the real beginning of exile. 

^ He who afterwards helped to overthrow Robespierre. 



59 



CHAPTER VI 

From Coppet to Mickleham — The motive for the journey — The 
dmigrh at Juniper Hall — Madame de Stael's friendship with 
Fanny Burney — M. de Narbonne "behaves badly." 

" Peacefully sheltered in the chateau at Coppet," 
says Dr. Stevens, " Madame de Stael immediately 
became its chatelaine, the priestess of its abundant 
hospitalities ; " but this statement somewhat anti- 
cipates the facts. 

The date of Madame de Stael's second confine- 
ment was fast approaching, and she was in no con- 
dition to dispense hospitalities. Nor did she and 
her family remain at Coppet. The chateau, as we 
have seen, was not considered a sufficiently safe 
retreat. M. Necker was afraid of being kid- 
napped by raiders from over the border. He 
removed to Rolle, and it was there that Madame 
de Stael's second son, Albert de Stael, was born. 

The time, moreover, was inappropriate for social 
relaxations, and the party were in no mood to enjoy 
them. Madame Necker was ill — she was, in fact, 
continually ailing for many years before her death. 
M. Necker was a depressed and practically a broken 
man. Conscious of his position as the pilot who 
had failed to weather the storm — made the more 
acutely conscious of it by the demeanour of the 

60 



Necker a Broken Man 

French emigres who refused to cross his threshold 
or even to speak to him — he locked himself 
up in his room and wrote pamphlets, vindicating 
his own policy, and advising the French nation 
about the policy of his successors. Our most 
graphic picture of his situation is to be found in 
one of Gibbon's letters to Lord Sheffield. 

" I passed four days at the castle of Coppet 
with Necker ; and could have wished to have 
shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth 
possessed with the Daemon of ambition. With all 
the means of private happiness in his power, he 
is the most miserable of human beings : the past, 
the present, and the future are all equally odious 
to him. When I suggested some domestic amuse- 
ments of books, building, etc., he answered with a 
deep tone of despair, ' Dans I'etat oii je suis, je ne 
puis sentir que le coup de vent qui m'a abattu.' 
How different from the careless cheerfulness with 
which our poor friend Lord North supports his 
fall ! Madame Necker maintains more external 
composure, mais le Viable nyperdrien. It is true 
that Necker wished to be carried into the Closet, 
like old Pitt, on the shoulders of the people, and 
that he has been ruin^^d by the Democracy which 
he has raised." 

That was in 1791, Gibbon being at the time 
a resident of Lausanne, reposing in tranquillity 
after the completion of his history of the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire. He knew, 
therefore, what were the "means of private 
happiness " of which he spoke. They were those 

61 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

from which he himself derived a calm enjoyment 
— the amenities of life upon the shores of the 
most beautiful lake in Europe. But there was 
one difference between his condition and Necker's 
which he failed to seize. He was transplanted ; 
Necker was uprooted. In a subsequent letter, dated 
April 4, 1792, Madame de Stael's name appears. 

" Madame de Stael is expected in a few weeks 
at Coppet, where they receive her, and where, 
* to dumb forgetfulness a prey,' she will have 
leisure to regret the pleasing anxious being, which 
she enjoyed amidst the storms of Paris. But 
what can the poor creature do ? her husband is 
in Sweden, her lover is no longer Secretary of 
War, and her father's house is the only place 
where she can reside with the least degree of 
prudence and decency." 

The arrival expected in April was postponed, 
as has been already mentioned, until September ; 
and the stay was of short duration. Already, in 
December, immediately after the birth of her 
child, she began to talk about departing. Our 
first intimation is in a letter from Necker to 
Henri Meister, then in London. 

" My daughter is going to leave us to pass a 
few months, not in London but at a country 
place in England, where several of her friends 
are living together. It is not from you, sir, to 
whom I am attached, and who are attached to 
us, that I shall conceal the grief which this 
journey causes us. I have made every imagin- 

62 



Motive of Journey to England 

able effort to prevent it, but in vain. . . . We 
must resign ourselves to what we cannot hinder, 
but it is very unfortunate from every point of view." 

Then follows a letter from Madame Necker 
to Gibbon, dated the 2nd of January 1793. 

"After having tried in vain every device that 
wit or reason could suggest to divert my daughter 
from so mad a project, we thought that a short 
sojourn at Geneva might make her more amenable 
by bringing her under the influence of public 
opinion. She took advantage of the liberty 
which she thus obtained to start even sooner 
than we apprehended. Under such sad auspices 
has she begun her new year and caused us to 
begin ours. I will say nothing more." 

Finally there is a letter in which Gibbon hands 
the news on to Lord Sheffield, adding signifi- 
cantly : ** Her friend the Vicomte de Narbonne 
is somewhere about Dorkino- ; " and in that 
sentence the motive of the journey, undertaken 
at a time when her health was impaired and 
travelling was dangerous, and the grounds of her 
parents' objection to it, appear to be disclosed. 

Probably it was the first occasion on which her 
parents realised that she was prepared, in the 
matters of the heart, to take — and had indeed 
already taken — the final compromising step which 
her mother, warmly as she made love on paper, had 
never been in any real peril of taking. On paper, 
it is true, Madame Necker seems, when we turn 
over those of her letters which M. d'Hausson villa 

63 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

has published, to have gone rather far. We are 
brought to the same conclusion whether we look 
at the letters which she wrote or at those which 
she received. "The moments of your leisure," 
she wrote to Gibbon, "belong to her who has 
been your first love and your last. I cannot make 
up my mind which of these titles is the sweeter 
and the dearer to my heart." She kept a letter 
from Marmontel, in which he threatened to swim 
the Channel in order to follow her to England : 
"Why should not friendship have her Leander 
as well as love ? " She kept a letter from Thomas, 
in which he exclaimed : " Your soul is necessary 
to mine — without yours mine is wandering ; it is 
never in its place and is never at rest but when 
it is beside you." The correspondence is full of 
"words to that effect," spoken to and by a great 
number of correspondents. 

It all meant nothing, however — nothing or very 
little. The most extreme comment which it 
warrants is that Madame Necker, when she 
writes to her friends, gives one the impression 
of a virtuous woman presuming on her virtue. 
Her affections, in truth, were rather of the head 
than of the heart. She spoke the language of 
gallantry because it was the language of the 
salons — because to use it seemed to be a part of 
the manners of good society. She may even be 
said to have used it with a certain appearance of 
affectation, as one who spoke a foreign tongue, 
acquired late in life. 

64 



Progress of the Revolution 

The daughter's case was very different from 
the mother's. She was, before everything else, 
sincere ; and she was plain, and she was 
passionate ; and she believed in her indefeasible 
right to happiness, to be attained if not through 
marriage, then through love ; and she had, in all 
departments of life alike, the genius, the energy, 
and the initiative of a man. And she did not 
love her husband, and had never loved him, and 
did love M. de Narbonne. It was only to be 
expected, in her case, that sentiment would be 
translated into action, and that, if she was not 
pursued, she would pursue. So she rose from her 
sick-bed, and raced across the Continent and the 
Channel to her lover. 

M. de Narbonne was one of a group of imigr^s 
who had hung on in France till the last. The 
extreme Royalists had left the country long before. 
Some eighteen thousand of them — the Army of 
Coblentz — were trying, not very successfully, to 
invade it under foreign leadership. The aristo- 
crats who were also reformers had remained behind, 
hoping at first, and still trying after they had 
ceased to hope, to lead and limit the Revolution. 
But the tide flowed too fast for them. Power 
slipped from their grasp, and they were as little able 
as Necker himself had been to stem the current. 
Terrible things which they could neither approve 
nor resist began to happen. The Swiss Guard 
were massacred in the Tuileries ; the epoch of 
domiciliary visits opened. They were themselves 
E 65 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

suspect, and had to get away as best they could, 
often narrowly escaping arrest. One of them only 
avoided detention, when his house was searched, 
by pretending that he was not himself, but the 
doctor called in to attend his sister-in-law, who 
had fainted in her alarm. Another was smuggled 
away in a boat, concealed beneath a pile of 
faggots. How M. de Narbonne was saved by 
Madame de Stael we have already seen. 

Though repudiated by the Revolutionists, how- 
ever, this company had no intention of fighting 
their country on their King's behalf. They only 
sought to wait, in a cheerful security, for better 
times. So they came to Mickleham in Surrey, 
and took Juniper Hall — which, of course, they 
called Junipere. 

You see the house — you cannot help seeing it 
— as you follow the highroad from Leatherhead 
to Dorking. Originally an inn styled the " Royal 
Oak," it had been bought and enlarged in the 
middle of the eighteenth century by Sir Cecil 
Bishop, from whom it had been acquired by a 
wealthy lottery-office keeper named Jenkinson, 
who let it to the imigr^s. It is an imposing red 
mansion, approached through a lodge gate by a 
drive, with a steep and thickly wooded hill behind, 
a wooded glade in front, and a clump of dark 
stately cedars in its immediate precincts — alto- 
gether a very gracious place of exile ; and the 
exiles themselves — both those who stayed in the 
Hall and those who came from time to time to 

6^ 



The Emigres at Juniper Hall 

visit it — were all persons of high distinction. 
Among them were the Marquise de la Chatre, 
M. de Narbonne, M. de Montmorency, M. Jaucourt,^ 
M. Malouet,^ the Princesse d'Hennin, Talleyrand, 
Lally-Tollendal, and General d'Arblay, who had 
been Lafayette's adjutant and was presently to be 
Fanny Burney's husband. Though they were 
poor, they were not quite destitute; though their 
property had been confiscated, they had money to 
go on with. They entertained. Fanny Burney, 
then on a visit to her sister, Mrs. Phillips, was 
one of their guests, and it is to her Diary and 
Letters that we have to go for most of our in- 
formation about their sojourn. 

Miss Burney was delighted with everything and 
everybody — especially with Madame de Stael and 
M. de Narbonne. Of the former she writes : 
" She is a woman of the first abilities, I think, I 
have ever seen ; she is more in the style of Mrs. 
Thrale than of any other celebrated character, but 
she has infinitely more depth, and seems an even 
more profound politician and metaphysician." Of 
the latter : "He bears the highest character for 
goodness, sweetness of manners, and ready wit. 
You could not keep your heart from him if you saw 
him only for half an hour." The constant play of 
wit and the serious interest taken in literary things 

^ He had been an officer and a Deputy, and he accompanied 
Talleyrand on his mission to London. Afterwards he was 
Louis xvili.'s Minister of Marine. 

2 One of the leaders of the Royalist party in the Constituant 
Assembly. He died as Minister of Marine in 1814. 

67 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

gave her a new and refreshing experience. In the 
midst of their trials these French exiles could 
write trasredies — or at all events Madame de Stael 
could write them — and read them aloud, and listen 
to the reading of them in the drawing-room. But 
that picture needs to be supplemented from the 
pen of Dr. Bollmann. 

" The Stael is a genius — an extraordinary, eccen- 
tric woman in all that she does. She only sleeps 
during a very few hours, and is uninterruptedly and 
fearfully busy all the rest of the time. Whilst her 
hair is being dressed, whilst she breakfasts, in fact 
during a third of the day, she writes. She has not 
sufficient quiet to look over what she has written." 

She gave it, in fact, to M. de Narbonne to look 
over and to copy, and it seems not unlikely that this 
was one of the tests under which M. de Narbonne's 
devotion to her broke down. But that is to 
anticipate. We have first to note how her rela- 
tions with M. de Narbonne cut short her intimacy 
with Miss Burney. 

Madame de Stael had invited Miss Burney to 
visit her ; but scandals were abroad, and Dr. 
Burney intervened. He admitted Madame de 
Stael's "literary and intellectual powers," — 

" But," he added, " as nothing human is allowed 
to be perfect, she has not escaped censure. Her 
house was the centre of Revolutionists previous to 
the loth of August, after her father's departure, 
and she has been accused of partiality to M. de 

68 



Scandals Abroad 

N . But perhaps all may be Jacobinical 

malignity. However, unfavourable stories of her 
have been brought hither, and the Burkes and 
Mrs. Ord have repeated them to me. ... If you 
are not absolutely in the house of Madame de 
Stael when this arrives, it would perhaps be 
possible for you to waive the visit to her, by a 
compromise of having something to do for Susy." 

Fanny Burney's reply was very characteristic 
of the country which invented Mrs. Grundy. 
She did not believe the calumny, she said, but she 
should certainly behave as if she did. " She is 
very plain," she writes; "he is very handsome; 
her intellectual endowments must be with him her 
sole attraction. ... I think you could not spend 
a day with them and not see that their commerce 
is that of pure but exalted and most elegant 
friendship." But she continues : — 

" I would nevertheless give the world to avoid 
being a guest under their roof, now I have heard 
even the shadow of such a rumour ; and I will, if 
it be possible without hurting or offending them. 
I have waived and waived acceptance almost from 
the moment of Madame de Stael's arrival, I 
prevailed with her to let my letter go alone to 
you, and I have told you, with regard to your 
answer, that you were sensible of the honour her 
kindness did me, and could not refuse to her 
request the week's furlough ; and then followed 
reasons for the compromise you pointed out, too 
diffuse for writing. As yet they have succeeded, 
though she is surprised and disappointed. She 

69 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

wants us to study French and English together, 
and nothing could to me be more desirable but 
for this invidious report." 

" Est-ce qu'une femme est en tutelle pour la 
vie en ce pays ? " was Madame de Stael's com- 
ment on the situation. It seemed to her that 
Miss Burney, who was forty, was behaving as if 
she were fourteen. No doubt she saw through 
the reasons that were given to the reason that 
was suppressed. But she tried not to be angry, 
and sent an amiable message through Mrs. 
Phillips : " Dites a Mile Burney que je ne lui 
en veux pas du tout — que je quitte le pays 
I'aimant bien sincerement, et sans rancune." 

She had, in fact, just then, other things besides 
the behaviour of Miss Burney to think about. 
She was parting not only from Miss Burney, but 
also from M. de Narbonne himself; and her grief 
was not lessened by the fact that she was to join 
her husband. Exactly what had passed between 
her and her lover we do not know. But we have 
Madame Recamier's word for it that " M. de 
Narbonne behaved very badly, as successful men 
too often do " ; and we have Mrs. Phillips' 
account of the parting : " Madame de Stael could 
not rally her spirits at all, and seemed like one 
torn from all that was dear to her." And then 
again, in the same letter : "I came home with 
Madame de Stael and M. de Narbonne. The 
former actually sobbed in saying farewell." 

And so back again to Switzerland. 



CHAPTER VII 

Madame de Stael returns to Switzerland — Her exertions on behalf 
of the emigres — Correspondence on this subject with Henri 
Meister — Death of Madame Necker — Benjamin Constant 
introduces himself. 

Sainte-Beuve's picture of Madame de Stael's life 
in Switzerland during the Terror is well known. 
"She passed the time," he says, "in the country 
of Vaud, with her father and some refugee friends, 
M. de Montmorency and M. Jaucourt. On these 
terraces of Coppet her most constant meditations 
contrasted the dazzling sunlight and the peace of 
nature with the horrors everywhere let loose by 
the hand of man. Her talent maintained a re- 
ligious silence ; from afar were heard, muffled and 
thick as the beating of the oars upon the Lake, the 
measured strokes of the guillotine upon the scaffold. 
The state of oppression and anguish in which she 
remained during these terrible months only suffered 
her, in the intervals of her active devotion to 
others, to desire death for herself, and to look 
forward to the end of the world and of this lost 
human race." 

The account has a certain poetical truth, but 
it is no more literally true than is the statement 
of Dr. Stevens that Madame de Stael " made the 

71 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Coppet mansion an asylum for Frenchmen who 
were fleeing from the guillotine." She was hardly 
at Coppet at all during the period, owing to 
M. Necker's fear that the house might be raided 
and its inhabitants kidnapped and carried off to 
France ; and her talent was not silent. In one 
pamphlet she pleaded eloquently with the French 
people for the life of Marie- Antoinette ; in another 
she pleaded with Pitt that he should make peace 
with France. She was writing, at the same time, 
though she did not publish it until later, her 
treatise De V Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur 
des Individus et des Nations. 

It is a remarkable work, immature perhaps, as 
many critics have said, but not the less character- 
istic. As in almost everything that Madame de 
Stael wrote, the personal note is somewhat louder 
than it is meant to be. To read it with care is to 
see the particular masquerading in the garments 
of the general, and a confession tricked out as a 
philosophy. A passage has already been quoted 
from it which can only be read as a confession of 
the writer's failure to find happiness in marriage. 
There are many other passages which can only 
be read as confessions of her failure to find happi- 
ness in love, and as veiled — but very thinly veiled 
— protests that she has been treated badly by her 
lover. *' It is certain," she declares, "that love is 
of all passions the most fatal to human happiness." 
It confers, for a few brief instants, a supreme joy ; 
but this comes to an end, and then : " One goes 

72 



A Woman's Tragedy 

on living without any chance that the future will 
give one back the past." And this is a woman's 
tragedy far more than a man's. 

" Love is woman's whole existence. It is only 
an episode in the lives of men. Reputation, 
honour, esteem, everything depends upon how a 
woman conducts herself in this regard ; whereas, 
according to the rules of an unjust world, the laws 
of morality itself are suspended in men's relations 
with women. They may pass as good men 
though they have caused women the most terrible 
suffering which it is in the power of one human 
being to inflict upon another. They may be re- 
garded as loyal though they have betrayed them. 
They may have received from a woman marks of 
a devotion which would so link two friends, two 
fellow-soldiers, that either would feel dishonoured 
if he forgot them, and they may consider them- 
selves free of all obligations by attributing the 
services to love — as though this additional gift of 
love detracted from the value of the rest. No 
doubt there are men whose character furnishes an 
honourable exception ; but — such is the force of 
public opinion in the matter — there are few 
who would dare, not fearing ridicule, to pro- 
claim, in the affairs of the heart, the delicacy 
of principle which a woman would deem her- 
self obliged to assume even if she did not 
feel it." 

Decidedly these generalisations have a very 
particular meaning, and the dots stand ready to 
be put upon the i's. It was passion, and no lighter 

73 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

sentiment, that Madame de Stael had felt for 
M. de Narbonne. We find the word in italics 
in one of Miss Berry's letters describing her 
own relations with Madame de Stael : " She 
was too much occupied with her passion * de s'en 
apercevoir de mon existence.'" The services 
which she had rendered him were the highest, 
since she had first pushed him into Cabinet office, 
and then saved his life, at the risk of her own, 
when he was proscribed. And he had been 
ungrateful ; he had " behaved badly " ; she had 
pursued her romance to England, only to see 
it end. That was the bitter reflection that was 
uppermost in her mind and dominated her life 
during this time of exile. She poured out her 
soul on paper. 

Yet, at the same time, she was active. Activity 
was, at all times, almost a disease with her ; and 
now there was a double need for it. Her thoughts 
required distraction, and there was work for her 
to do. We trace the course of her life best in the 
series of her letters to Henri Meister. 

Henri Meister was a man of fifty, and an old 
friend of the Necker family. His father and 
Necker's father, the Genevan professor, had pelted 
each other with pamphlets in a theological dispute. 
He had himself succeeded Madame Necker as a 
dependent in the house of Madame Vermenoux. 
The Neckers had helped to "introduce" him in 
Paris, where he had become first Grimm's col- 
laborator and then his successor as editor of the 

74 



Exertions on Behalf of the Emigres 

Correspondence Littdraire} Madame de Stael's 
letters to him were mostly, if not exclusively, 
on matters of business. On other matters he 
was not in her confidence ; but he was glad 
to be useful to her, and she gave him the 
opportunity. 

It is not until late In 1794 that she dates from 
Coppet. The earlier letters are mostly from 
Nyon and Lausanne — one or two of them from 
Zurich and the Swiss Baden. That definitely 
settles her whereabouts during these years. Her 
chief, and almost her sole, preoccupation, we 
find, is with her friends the dmigrds. She 
managed to get several of them safely out of 
France with Swiss or Swedish passports. Her 
husband, though he was not with her, and kept 
diplomatically in the background, was her col- 
laborator in this good work. Some of the 
refugees — M. de Narbonne, to our astonishment, 
was among them — found a shelter in her house, 
not at Coppet, as Dr. Stevens says, but at 
Nyon. She could not receive them all, how- 
ever ; and for the rest she sought to find other 
Swiss domiciles. Notably we find her much 
exercised about the fortunes of Talleyrand, of 
whom she writes as if, now that the ardour of 
M. de Narbonne had cooled, she held him dearer 
than a friend. But the story will be best told in 
extracts from the letters. 

^ A MS. journal of literary gossip, circulated only among sub- 
scribers. Most of the German princes took it. 

75 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" Nyon, December 23, 1793. 

" Two gentlemen, de Montmorency and de 
Jaucourt, have been here with me for two months 
under Swedish names ; M. de Narbonne is coming 
under a Spanish name. Berne knows it, and allows 
it, because I am living absolutely alone in the 
country, and because it is abundantly proved that 
we only aspire to the most obscure retirement. 
But the Bishop of Autun, whom I love so dearly, 
cannot be received here on account of the demo- 
cratic opinions which he formerly held. Opinion 
in your canton is more liberal. Be so good as 
to tell me if I can, with some expectation of 
security, hire there for the spring a country house 
to which I can invite M. de Talleyrand. Tell 
me if Zurich is willing to give expression to the 
moderation of its opinions by according an asylum 
to men who, on account of a similar moderation, 
are being persecuted. Tell me, finally, if I may 
be indebted to you for the happiness of spending 
the summer with you and with my friends. If 
that be impossible, I will ask you to procure me 
some information about Schaffhausen. That 
would be much less convenient ; but, in any case, 
what I want is a house which may serve as a 
shelter from the insults that are in the air and as 
a retreat from the passions of men." 

"■February 19, 1794. 

" I have read in the Schaffhausen Gazette that 
the Bishop of Autun has been expelled from 
England. I should not believe this story if it 
were not that I have had no English news for a 
fortnight. The report has so upset me that I can 

76 



Correspondence with Henri Meister 

hardly hold my pen in my hands. If he came 
here, I should be only too happy. But it seems 
that he is going to America; but . . . If it is 
God's will that the rumour of this fresh misfortune 
is untrue, I will write and ask you to insert a 
denial in the paper. 

"What do you know about M. Ott's country 
house at Zurich ? " 

** Nyon, March 12, 1794. 

** M. Ott's house seems to be the very thing 
to suit me ; but if I go there I prefer to board 
myself, as that is the easier and more economical 
plan. I think, however, that, as I am not quite 
sure that I am not going to London, and am still 
less sure that I shall please the Zurich people so 
well that they will allow me to have two or three 
of my friends in the house with me, I had better 
begin by staying a week with M. Ott in the town. 
During that time I will, with your help and the 
grace of God, bring all my little coquetries into 
play ; and, if they succeed, I will, with your 
assistance, choose my own house, and a pension 
for Madame de Chatre, who is not comfortable in 
the Canton of Berne. I will settle at Winterthur 
or Rapperswyl, as M. de Montesquiou ^ has done at 
Bremgarten, if that suits them better. . . . But say 
nothing and do nothing until I arrive. I sometimes 
get what I want in a personal interview. . . . 

** I begin to detest Europe, and my last attempt 
for my friends shall be Zurich. For my own part, 
I shall drag on for a while longer. But how, at 

^ He had commanded the army of the South and conquered 
Savoy, but was accused of treason in November 1792, and took 
refuge in Switzerland. 

77 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

seven-and-twenty, is one to cut oneself adrift from 
the past ? How to love as one used to love ? " 

"Lausanne, March 28, 1794. 
" My mother's condition is so sad that I shall 
perhaps have to give up the idea of settling at 
Zurich. I hope my friends may be received there, 
but I shall not live there myself If it is my fatal 
name that frightens people, my opinion is that, my 
name being more formidable than my person, I had 
better go and show myself there, since my presence 
has nearly always been found supportable." 

So the letters proceed ; and Madame de Stael's 
life during the period which they cover can easily 
be reconstructed from them. It is a life of 
feverish activity on behalf of others, and at the 
same time of dull despair on her own account, 
with literary work for the inevitable anodyne. 
The old order has broken up, and everything 
that she has been used to live for has come to an 
end. Her father is in exile and disgrace ; her 
mother is dying. Many of her friends have 
perished on the scaffold. The rest are scattered 
and impoverished. She has no love, save her 
father's, to lean upon ; for she has never loved 
her husband, and M. de Narbonne is cold, and 
the Bishop of Autun has gone to Philadelphia. 
One hardly knows whether or not to be surprised, 
in such conditions, to find her turning longing 
eyes to France, and threatening to return thither 
long before the events of Thermidor have checked 
the falling of the knife. 

7^ 



Death of Madame Necker 

She tells Henri Meister of this project in 
a letter written from Baden on her way back 
from her visit to Zurich. Her reasons are not 
given, but something in the letter suggests that 
she hoped, by her presence at Paris, to save 
a portion of her fortune from the wreck, and that 
Henri Meister approved of the attempt, and that 
it was a part of her plan that her father and 
mother should follow her. 

" We cannot all start at once. The season is 
too bad for my mother to travel. Besides, the cost 
would be too much for me. I shall go at very 
small expense, in excellent and very useful com- 
pany. I shall send them the necessary money to join 
me, and they will find the business getting on nicely. 
I think I ought not to hesitate a moment." 

She did not start, however. Probably the 
desire to be up and doing counted for more in 
the scheme than any serious expectation of rescu- 
ing her own or her father's property from the 
debacle ; but however that may have been, she had 
to abandon her intention when she came home to 
find herself in a house of mourning — her mother 
dead, and her father needing all the consolation 
that her presence could afford. 

Perhaps she had not loved her mother over 
much. Madame Necker had been too much the 
schoolmistress and Madame de Stael too little 
the docile scholar for perfect sympathy to subsist 
between them. The standing quarrel between 

79 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the older and the younger generations had had 
some aggravating circumstances in their case. 
Right, and duty, and happiness were three ideas 
which they defined differently. If the daughter 
had some of the mother's pedantry, the mother 
had always been shocked by the daughter's 
passion — shocked equally by her dependence 
upon love and her independence of marriage ; 
and their life together had been more or less of 
an armed truce, with Necker, who loved them 
both, for mediator. But the blow was none the 
less a blow, falling, as it did, at a time of universal 
tragedy. If only for her father's sake, she was 
overwhelmed with grief. 

Her first thought was that she must take him 
away somewhere. She inquired from Henri 
Meister about houses at Zurich. " Could you 
find us a furnished house in the suburbs ? 
Should we find M. Ott's house fit to live in 
if we arrived unexpectedly ? And will you open 
negotiations for a place at Weiningen, arranging 
to provide the furniture ? I think I will take my 
father there." But then a difficulty arises : " My 
mother has left such extraordinary instructions as 
to the embalming and preservation of her body — 
how it is to be laid out under glass in spirits of 
wine — that if, as she imagined, the appearance of 
her features had been preserved, my poor father 
would have passed his whole life in gazing on 
her. ... It follows that, until the monument is 
finished, — until August, that is to say, — he will not 

80 



Eftorts on Behalf of de Saussure 

leave this part of the country. After that, I think, 
he will have no objection to going to Zurich ; 
he said so in so many words. But we must stay 
here for the summer. He wanted to go back to 
Coppet to wait till the monument was finished ; but 
I besought him to keep the bier at Beaulieu, as 
Coppet frightens me for various reasons." 

So they lingered on in the neighbourhood of 
Lausanne, and the correspondence harks back to 
the provision of domiciles for the dmigr^s, and 
suggests that strings may be pulled for the 
advantage of M. de Saussure — the philosopher 
who had climbed Mont Blanc, a connection by 
marriage of the Neckers, who had lost the greater 
part of his fortune : " He has been thinking about 
Russia. Would the Empress perhaps allow him 
to give public lectures, or interest him in the 
education of the sons of the Grand Duke ? Or 
would some nobleman, dazzled by the name of 
such a tutor, entrust his son to him ? Would not 
Grimm honour himself by putting forward so 
illustrious a man — taking care not to mention his 
relationship to us ? " Then there is mention of 
something that Madame de Stael has been 
writing — an Epitre ait Malheur. The only 
things of which there is no mention are certain 
episodes in the writer's social life, and certain 
acquaintances which she was then making. 

It was at that period that she came to know of 
Count Joseph de Maistre, Catholic dmigrd and 
reactionary ; but he hardly counts. They did not 
F 8i 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

like each other, though they respected each 
other's gifts. The only trace left by their few 
interviews is an epigram — one of the many 
epigrams by which men avenged themselves for 
Madame de Stael's success in outshining them in 
society. She was too much used, he thought, to 
adulation : " S'il lui avait plu d'accoucher en 
public dans la chapelle de Versailles on aurait 
battu des mains." The other acquaintance was 
of deep and lasting importance to her life. 

The time was September 1794. Madame de 
Stael was living in Lausanne, and a young man 
who was passing through Lausanne set out to call 
on her. They had many mutual friends. He 
had cousins who knew her rather well, and were 
dazzled by her — one cousin in particular who had 
written of her as "a very extraordinary woman of 
distinctly superior genius." Nothing was more 
natural than that he should desire to know her, 
and should seize the opportunity presented by his 
visit to the town. As he walked towards her 
house, he met her driving out ; but he had the 
courage of his curiosity. He signalled to the 
driver to stop, and approached the carriage and 
introduced himself. He was Monsieur Benjamin 
Constant. Madame de Stael invited him to enter 
the carriage and drive home with her to supper. 
He took his seat by her side, and so the curtain 
drew up on the new drama. 



82 



CHAPTER VIII 

Benjamin Constant de Rebecque — His ancestors — His precocious 
childhood — His dissolute youth — He meets Madame de 
Charriere at Paris and visits her at Colombier — Writes the 
History of Religion on the backs of playing-cards — Departure 
for Brunswick — Affectionate correspondence — Colombier re- 
visited — The end of the liaison. 

Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was French 
by descent, but Swiss by birth and nationality. 
His father's family came from Aire, in Artois. 
His ancestor, Augustin de Constant, in the ser- 
vice of the Emperor Charles v., sent on a mission 
to France, embraced the Reformed religion, ac- 
cepted an appointment from Jeanne d'Albret, 
and, at the battle of Coutras, saved the life of 
Henri iv., who rewarded him with the governorship 
of Marans, had ultimately to leave the country in 
consequence of the religious persecutions, and 
died at Lausanne. His mother, nh de Chandieu, 
wais descended from Antoine, Seigneur of Roche- 
Chandieu, in Dauphine, who became a pastor of 
the Reformed faith, fled to Geneva at the time of 
the Saint Bartholomew massacre, was recalled by 
Henri iv., as whose chaplain he acted at the 
battle of Coutras, but subsequently returned to 
Geneva, where he died. 

One of Augustin de Constant's great-grandsons 

83 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

was Samuel de Constant, governor of the fortress 
of Bois-le-Duc, and known as a friend of Voltaire. 
This Baron de Constant had two daughters — the 
Marquise de Langallerie, in whose house at 
Lausanne Voltaire organised his theatre, and 
Madame de Charriere de Bavois — and four sons, 
David Constant d'Hermenches, Philippe, Juste- 
Louis-Arnold, and Samuel. 

The Constant d'Hermenches were among 
Voltaire's best amateur actors, but hardly concern 
this story. Philippe died young. Juste-Louis- 
Arnold married Henriette de Chandieu, and 
became the father of Benjamin ; he was an officer 
in the Dutch service. Samuel married Mademoi- 
selle Charlotte Pictet, of an old and notable 
Genevan family, and settled down on an estate 
near Lausanne, where four children were born to 
him — Benjamin's four cousins, Rosalie, Lisette, 
Juste, and Charles. Rosalie, ugly and deformed, 
but keenly witty and brilliantly intelligent, was 
much in her cousin's confidence, and was the 
observant and by no means silent spectator of the 
vicissitudes of the long liaison about to be related. 
Much of our intimate knowledge of it is picked 
up from her letters. Her brother Charles helped 
the future biographer by bequeathing the family 
papers to the Public Library of Geneva. 

Benjamin was an only child, and his mother 
died in giving birth to him, in 1767. He was at 
first brought up by his maternal grandmother, 
Madame de Chandieu, and his aunt, Madame de 

84 



Benjamin Constant 

Nassau, n^e de Chandieu, and married to a 
German Count from whom she was separated. 
At the age of seven, however, his father took 
him to Holland and put him in the hands of a 
tutor. A number of his letters from this date 
onwards have been preserved, and they display a 
precocity, not merely of scholarship but of ideas, 
which is uncanny and almost terrifying. At the 
age of eight he is able to write to his grand- 
mother : " I think I am paying very dearly for 
knowledge since it takes me away from you." 
At the age of nine he is speaking to her with 
enthusiasm of his studies : *' I am reading Roman 
history and Homer. It gives me great pleasure, 
especially Homer, because he is a poet and I like 
poetry, and, while amusing me, he gives me great 
ideas. He is the father of the religion of the 
ancients." 

By the time he is ten, however, he has dis- 
covered something of the vanity of study. 

"My dear grandmother," he writes, "let us 
make an agreement. Do you let me give you a 
little of my health, and give me in exchange ten of 
your years. I should be the gainer ; for I should 
have more sense, and, having learnt Latin and 
Greek, and all the things that I must know, I 
should learn from you the things that are more 
essential. For what do the thoughts of these 
ancients matter? I have not to live with them, 
and I think I shall drop them altogether as soon 
as I am of an age to live in the society of living 
men and women." 

85 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

And then follows a still more striking proof of the 
direction in which his young thoughts are straying. 

" I sometimes see here a young English girl of 
my own age whom I prefer to Cicero, Seneca, 
and the rest of them. She is teaching me Ovid. 
She has never read him or heard of him, but I 
find the whole of Ovid written in her eyes. I am 
writing a little romance for her, and am sending 
you the first pages of it. You shall have the rest 
of it if you like." 

In other letters we have the picture of the 
boy's daily life. He is studying other things 
besides the classical authors — dancing and the 
harpsichord to wit. He goes to the theatre ; he 
plays piquet; it is his good fortune to "call 
sometimes on a beautiful young lady from 
England." He is composing an opera, "verses 
and music and all." It is going to be very 
beautiful, and he is " not afraid of being hissed." 
In a letter to his father we find a further trace of 
the "little romance " already referred to. This is 
the document — apparently a dedication — written 
at the age of twelve : — 

" Les Chevaliers : Heroic Romance by H 

B C de R at Brussels, 1779. 

" Letter to M. Juste Constant : — 

" Dear Author of my days, — I have been told 
that fathers find the works of their sons excellent, 
even though these are only a mass of remin- 
iscences thrown together without art. In order 

S6 



A Cynic in the Nursery 

to demonstrate the falsity of this report, I have 
the honour of presenting this work to you, in 
the full confidence that, although it is I who have 
composed it, you will not find it good, and will 
not even have the patience to read it." 

Decidedly this is a precocity which differs not 
in degree but in kind from all the stock examples 
— from the case, for instance, of John Stuart Mill 
learning Greek a$ the age of three, or Macaulay 
in his high chair expounding to the parlourmaid 
from a volume as big as himself. Whereas the 
others were only clever children, Benjamin 
Constant strikes one as having been born grown 
up — a little man of the world in short frocks — 
desabuse in the nursery — disillusionised by intuitive 
anticipation. We shall see, as we proceed, how 
the child was father to the man ; how the child 
became a cynic, while the cynic remained a child, 
never strong enough to find satisfaction in 
cynicism, always going back to the deceptions 
which did not deceive, always hankering after the 
emotions of which he found himself incapable. 

At the absurd age of thirteen his University 
career began, and he was successively at Oxford, 
at Erlangen, and at Edinburgh. At the last- 
named seat of learning he made the acquaintance 
of Sir James Mackintosh ; but nothing of lively 
interest is known about this portion of his life. 
It was an uprooted life in which no new ties, even 
of a sentimental sort, seem to have been formed. 
He was serving his apprenticeship to cosmo- 

87 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

politanism — earning the appellation of "the first 
of the cosmopolitans " — becoming a cosmopolitan 
of a much more distinctive type than was fore- 
shadowed by the careers of such predecessors as 
Horace Walpole and Baron Grimm — a man 
without a country and without a home. 

In 1787 we find him in Paris. "How 
foolishly," he afterwards wrote, " I wasted there 
my time, my money, and my health ! " He 
gambled, of course, — it was the vice of the age, — 
and indulged in the other vices natural to un- 
disciplined youth. His father heard of his 
proceedings, and for once asserted his authority, 
and summoned him to Bois-le-Duc, where he was 
in garrison ; but Benjamin rebelled and would not 
come. One can read his character at the age of 
twenty in the letter in which he told the story 
of this impetuous revolt. 

" I pictured myself," he wrote, "as a poor devil 
who had failed in all his projects. I was bored, 
wretched, more sick than ever of my melancholy 
life ; and I pictured this poor father of mine 
disappointed of all his hopes. A fixed idea 
settled in my head. I said to myself : * Let me 
be off ; let me live alone ; let me no longer cause 
unhappiness to my father, or trouble to anyone.' 

" My head was excited. In haste I pick up 
three shirts and a few pairs of stockings. A 
saddler in the house opposite to me hires me a 
post-chaise. I send for horses to drive me to 
Amiens. I get into my carriage, with my three 
shirts, a pair of slippers, and thirty-one louis in 

88 



Madame de Charri^re 

my pocket. I drive in hot haste. In twenty 
hours I cover sixty-nine leagues. I reach Calais. 
I embark, I arrive at Dover, and awake as if 
from a dream." 

A walking tour was thus the first remedy 
which he tried against the maladie du Steele. 
It was also the remedy tried at the same date 
against the same disorder by Ramond de 
Carbonniere, who, upset by The Sorrows of 
Werther^ restored himself to mental health by 
making first ascents in the Pyrenees. His 
wanderings in the Scottish Highlands, however, 
did not cure him. He needed not Nature's but 
Woman's sympathy, and for a time he found 
what he sought in the house of a lady whom he 
had met in Paris — Madame de Charriere, the 
novelist, author of Caliste and the Lettres 
Neuchdteloises. 

Madame de Charriere was of an old and noble 
Dutch family. Isabelle Agnes Elizabeth van 
Tuyll van Serooskerken van Zuylen was her 
maiden name, and she was witty rather than 
beautiful. After rejecting many suitors, she saw 
the time arrive when she could no longer hope to 
pick and choose, and in these circumstances 
she accepted the hand of M. de Charriere, a 
Swiss gentleman who had been a tutor in her 
father's house. He took her to live at Colombier, 
near Neuchatel. 

Save for a new building or two — notably a 
handsome schoolhouse — the village (or perhaps 

89 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

one should call it a little town) has hardly altered 
since the eighteenth century. An old castle, now 
used as a barrack, frowns from the brow of a low 
hill upon ill-kept avenues which stretch away 
towards the reedy marshes and the Lake shore. 
The narrow streets are silent and empty, and the 
grass grows in them. Your impression, as you 
walk through them, is of a stagnant place, 
detached from life ; you think of Tennyson's lines 
about " a place where no one comes, Or hath come 
since the making of the world." 

You can find Madame de Charriere's house if 
you inquire for it, though no mural tablet marks 
it out, and no photographer has put it on a picture 
postcard. It stands a little away from the main 
street, at the foot of the hill, and seems half 
schloss half farm, with rough sheds for stable and 
coach-house, built round a court containing the 
inevitable pump. The entrance is at the foot of 
a circular tower, which you ascend (if you are 
bidden) by a winding stone staircase of venerable 
age ; and you may be shown (by the favour of the 
present tenants) a kitchen which is obviously a 
survival of a remote past, a dining-room which is 
dark even at noon, and a long salon, naturally 
cold, and difficult to warm, built above one of the 
sheds, and looking out over vegetable gardens 
and vineyards. 

Here Madame de Charriere sat, and wrote, 
and was bored. She had nothing in common 
with her husband — nothing in common with more 

90 



A Visit to Colombier 

than two or three of her neighbours. " One's 
imagination," she wrote, '* dries up here. In the 
matter of Hterature, beyond M. Du Peyrou, with 
whom I sometimes talk about Rousseau, who 
dictates a note for me to his servant nearly every 
day, and to whom I also write nearly every day, 
there is no one here to whom I can talk for a 
quarter of an hour on the subjects of greatest 
interest to me." She wrote, therefore, to distract 
herself; and though what she wrote was fiction, 
and distinctly good fiction, the citizens of 
Neuchatel neither sympathised nor understood. 
Her lively pictures of their sluggish manners gave 
offence. She was accused of caricaturing and 
calumniating individuals. *' It was bound to be," 
she said, "though I had not thought of it before. 
When one draws a fanciful but true picture of a 
flock of sheep, each sheep discovers its own like- 
ness in the picture." 

To this dull house Benjamin Constant came 
upon a visit, on his way to take up an appoint- 
ment which his father had procured for him at 
the Court of Brunswick. He was twenty, and 
Madame de Charriere was forty-seven. Their 
relations were bound, in the long run, to be 
governed by these facts. She must have known 
it from the first, and he was certain to discover 
it before any great lapse of time. For the 
moment, however, they had need of each other, 
and could live in the present, looking neither 
before nor after. The young man figured as the 

91 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

lady's "poor wounded dove," She could be 
with half her nature his mistress, and with the 
other half his monitress and guardian angel. 

The visit was spun out. Two months elapsed 
before Benjamin could tear himself away ; though 
the link between them was doubtless more in- 
tellectual than passionate. They could talk ; and 
it was so long since Madame de Charriere had 
had anyone to talk to who understood, or was 
interested in what she had to say. So the 
long October and November evenings were all 
too short for them, while they sat together by 
the subdued lamplight in the salon. Benjamin 
was engaged upon a History of Religion, which 
he was to rewrite many times before publish- 
ing it ; he wrote it on the backs of playing- 
cards which he threaded together on a string. 
Madame de Charriere sat opposite to him, writing 
a novel, and occasionally reading passages aloud 
for his criticism. Where M. de Charriere spent 
his evenings we do not know — perhaps in the 
tavern with his Swiss friends, perhaps in the 
kitchen with his pipe and bowl. It must have 
been very clear to him that he was not wanted 
in the drawing-room. 

It was as much as the friends could do to 
separate when midnight struck. The hour always 
found them in the midst of some interminable dis- 
cussion, now philosophic, and now sentimental ; 
and they sat down in their respective bedrooms 
and wrote notes to send to each other by the 

92 



Aflectionate Correspondence 

servant as soon as they were called. Still harder 
was the parting when Benjamin had at last to 
set out for Brunswick. The letters which he 
despatched to her as often as he stopped to change 
horses on the journey were passionate avowals. 

" The roads are frightful, the wind is cold, and 
I am sad — sadder to-day than I was yesterday, 
just as I was sadder yesterday than the day before, 
and shall be sadder to-morrow than to-day. To 
quit you for a single day is hard and painful, and 
every day is a fresh pain added to those which 
have gone before." 

** As long as you live, and as long as I live, 
I shall always say to myself, in whatever situation 
I may be : * There is a Colombier in the world.' 
Before I knew you I used to say to myself: 'If 
they torture me too much, I shall kill myself.' 
Now I say : * If they make life too hard for me, 
I have a retreat at Colombier.'" 

" This evening, while playing loto, I thought 
of you, as you will easily believe. The idea of 
you mingled, so to say, with the room in which 
we were ; and as I was undressing, a moment 
since, I asked myself: 'Who was it, then, that I 
found so charming to-night at the Duchess' 
reception ? ' And, in an instant, I realised that 
it was you. It is thus that, at a distance of 250 
leagues from me, you contribute to my happiness 
without suspecting it. Adieu, you who are ten 
thousand times good, ten thousand times dear, 
ten thousand times beloved." 

It could not last, of course. Nothing is more 
93 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

certain than that. The woman of seven -and-forty 
must grow old while the lad of twenty was only 
growing up. Not for many years could the last 
love of the one run concurrently with the first love 
of the other. Autumn must decline into winter 
while May blossomed into June. The boy must 
live his own life, and she must let him live it. 
The most that she could hope for was to keep 
some vague lien on his heart by not insisting. 
There was a Colombier in the world ; and if she 
left him free to range, he would sometimes, when 
life went hardly with him, remember it and return 
to it. 

And so it happened. At first Benjamin wrote 
to Madame de Charriere from Brunswick to tell 
her of his boredom and his melancholy. " How," 
he asks, "am I to succeed? How am I to 
please ? How am I to live ? " But presently 
he writes that he is going to be married to 
Wilhelmina, Baroness von Cram, maid of honour 
to the Grand Duchess. She was ugly, pock- 
marked, red-eyed, and thin. So, at least, says 
Rosalie de Constant, who was astonished at her 
cousin's choice. She adds, however, that "her 
husband adores her as if she were beautiful " ; 
and to Madame de Charriere the husband writes : 
" My wife makes me very happy. I cannot even 
wish to draw nearer to you, since that would 
alienate me from her ; but I shall never cease to 
say : ' The pity of it ! ' " 

Ai;id Madame de Charriere forgave. What 

94 



The Cooling of Love's Ardour 

else could she do, being in love and being forty- 
nine ? She forgave and waited ; and presently 
came the news that she perhaps was waiting for. 
Benjamin writes that he is unhappy with his wife 
— that he is about to divorce her — for sufficient 
reasons : " The day after to-morrow I am to 
appear, with Madame de Constant, before a Con- 
sistory which wishes to amuse itself by making 
efforts, that will be futile, to reconcile us." He 
adds that life at Brunswick has become intolerable 
to him, that he expects to obtain leave of absence, 
and that he hopes to come and stay with her at 
Colombier. But by this time she was fifty-three, 
while he was only twenty-six. 

His letters at this stage were numerous, but 
they were no longer in the same tone as the earlier 
letters. It is not merely that the bitterness of 
disillusion rings in them ; not merely that we find 
excuses — replies, no doubt, to reproaches — for not 
writing oftener and not coming sooner. We find 
much stronger proof in them of the cooling of 
the lover's ardour. Now it is this cynical out- 
burst, apropos of some chronique scandaleuse 
that he is relating : " I like to see the sum of 
pleasure in our little world increase, and, as I 
have vowed myself not only to celibacy but to 
continence, I am quite willing that others should 
have my share of these short-lived enjoyments." 
Now it is a confession of some love affair 
which his correspondent can hardly have been 
best pleased to read about. One Charlotte — 

95 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Charlottechen — whom we shall meet again in the 
course of this history, has been pestering him 
with attentions, proposing to sacrifice honour and 
fly with him. A certain petite comedienne has 
called, desiring to know whether he is willing to 
renew relations that have been interrupted. She 
is, in some way not described, "protected" by 
Charlottechen. *'You will admit," writes 
Benjamin, "that this is a quaint situation." 

And still Madame de Charriere forgave. For, 
at any rate, he did correspond with her, and did 
come to see her. He even spent a winter with 
her at Colombier ; and when he parted from 
her to return to Brunswick, in order that it might 
not be said that he had been turned out of a 
post which he was intending to resign, he wrote : 
" Adieu. I embrace you. You know how much 
I love you, and how happy it makes me to love." 
It was a part of what she wanted, though not 
the whole. She clung to the small place in his 
heart which was still reserved for her. She con- 
tinued to cling to it even after he had come under 
the new spell of Madame de Stael ; but when that 
happened she knew that the end was near. 

" I find him much changed," she wrote. " We 
laughed together at nothing, unless it were at 
ourselves, or rather at each other. Besides, the 
Neckers and the Staels were so many arch- 
saints, on no account to be profaned. The 
rupture is a pity for me. As for him, who is 
younger, and doubtless needs excitement and 

96 



The End of a Liaison 

variety, he can find many substitutes, and 
Madame de Stael, with her wit and her plots 
and plans, her alliances and quarrels with the 
entire world of men, is much more to him than 
I can be." 

That was the approach of the end. It actually 
came when Benjamin wrote to her : — 

■ " She is the second woman whom I have met 
who could have taken the place of all the rest of 
the world to me. You know who was the first. 
In fact, she is a being apart, a superior being, 
such as one meets only once in a century." 

After that, all was indeed over. It was only 
a question of formally speaking the last words 
over the grave of a dead love. Benjamin 
Constant seems to have spoken them in a letter 
dated March 26, 1796: "Farewell you who 
have embellished eight years of my life . . . you 
whom I can appreciate better than you will 
ever be appreciated by anyone else. Farewell. 
Farewell." 

He was twenty-nine when he wrote this, and 
she was fifty-six. She had nine more years to 
live — nine lonely years of slow descent into the 
Valley of the Shadow, by the side of a husband, 
now stone deaf, to whom she was indifferent, in 
the midst of a dull provincial society which 
did not understand her. He was at the be- 
ginning of a long entanglement, marked by 
strange vicissitudes, for which the previous romance 
had merely been the preparation. 
G 97 



CHAPTER IX 

Benjamin Constant's intimacy with Madame de Stael — What 
RosaUe de Constant thought — The Paris salon reopened — 
Services rendered to Talleyrand — And to Benjamin Constant 
— Revolt and reconquest — The birth of Albertine. 

Madame de Stael and Madame de Charriere 
had a slight acquaintance with each other. The 
younger lady had even gushed over the elder in 
her impulsive style. ** It is in Holland, it seems," 
she had written, "that one learns the French 
language best ; " and, in the midst of the Reign 
of Terror, she deplored having already read 
Caliste ten times, and being therefore unable to 
fly to it as a fresh consolation for her troubles. 
The elder lady was less enthusiastic. As an 
eighteenth-century purist, she disapproved of 
Madame de Stael's prose style. It was a 
" rhapsodical rigmarole," and she wondered what 
Bossuet and F^nelon would have thought of it. 
Benjamin Constant was inclined to the same 
view until he came under the personal spell. In 
September 1793 he writes: "I have not seen 
Madame de Stael, and have no curiosity to do 
so." Two months later, he pens a sarcastic 
criticism of the Apologie de la Reine. It seems 
to him affected and insincere. 

98 



Acquaintance Ripens into Intimacy 

"What," he asks, "is the sense of this plati- 
tude : * Brilliant and frivolous, like happiness 
and beauty ' ? The idea is false. Happiness is 
neither brilliant nor frivolous. And then those 
antitheses, and those balanced phrases when one 
has before one's eyes the picture of such long and 
fearful tortures ! One could spit on the thing." 

So the introduction was delayed until Ben- 
jamin's return from Brunswick, after winding 
up his affairs, closing his connection with the 
Court, and arranging for the removal of his 
library to Switzerland. In what circumstances 
it was effected we have seen ; and we have next 
to see in what circumstances acquaintance ripened 
into intimacy. The story is told in Benjamin 
Constant's Diary.^ 

"It is truly curious to observe," he writes, 
" how women take notice of the maddest actions 
of men who are interested in them, when these 
concern themselves. It had been agreed between 
Madame de Stael and myself that, in order to 
avoid compromising her, I should never remain 
with her after midnight. Whatever the charm 
which I found in our conversations, and however 
passionate my desire not to let the matter stop 
at conversation, I had to submit to this firm 
resolution. But this evening, the time having 
seemed to fly faster than usual, I pulled out my 
watch, to demonstrate that the hour for my 
departure had not yet arrived. But the in- 
exorable minute hand having deceived me, I was 
proceeding, with a movement of passion worthy 

^ Not \S\& Journal Intitne, but the Carnet, quoted by Sainte-Beuve. 

99 



iL i 



m' a 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

of a child, to smash on the floor the instrument 
of my discomfiture, when Madame de Stael 
exclaimed: 'What madness! How absurd you 
are ! ' But what an inward smile I perceived shining 
through her reproaches ! Decidedly this broken 
watch of mine is going to do me a great service." 

And the next day's entry is : — 

" I have not bought another watch. I have no 
longer any need of one." 

There is a crow of triumph in the sentence. 
Benjamin Constant believed himself to have won 
a victory, whereas the truth was that he had let 
himself be caught in a net. Presently he was to 
discover that ; but his cousin Rosalie saw it at 
once. "She is stronger than he is," she wrote; 
and her letters are full of her dislike of "the 
Ambassadress." For instance : — 

" She would die if she had not a crowd round 
her. In the absence of cats she would make 
herself a court of rats, and even a court of insects 
would be better than nothing at all." 

** She is very unhappy with advantages which 
would suffice to make ten other people happy ; 
but she is passionately fond of Benjamin. God 
knows where their passion will lead them." 

" I have seen my cousin de Stael, and my 
cousin the shorn sheep, two or three times. 
The day before yesterday, I called on them. I 
found her surrounded by the fox,^ the little cat,^ 
and the other.^ She was resting one of her 

* M. de Tracy. ^ Adrien de Meun. ' Benjamin Constant. 

lOO 



What Rosalie de Constant Thought 

elbows against the chest of the first, and toying 
with the head of the second, while the third 
stroked her neck and called her his 'dear little 
kitten.' The picture disgusted me, as did also their 
pleasantries at the expense of the Ambassador," 

" I have seen M. de Stael for the first time, 
and my first impression of him is that he is more 
agreeable than all his wife's lovers. He seems 
crushed, timid, and overwhelmed. Her manner 
is haughty and contemptuous. She speaks in 
his presence of her coquetterie and her adoration 
of Benjamin, to whom she vows that she will 
devote her life." 

And finally : — 

" Our cousin de Stael has been in a great state 
of mind because our uncle was unwilling to see 
either her or her son. She cannot understand 
that a father should be anything but delighted to 
see his son loved by her. She speaks of him 
quite openly as 'the man whom I love best in 
the world, the man to whom I cling with all the 
vitality that is left to me,' and never suspects the 
scandal she is causing." 

Madame de Stael, in truth, very seldom had 
the fear of scandal before her eyes or shrank 
from the public advertisement of her attachments. 
It was part of her conception of love that she 
should openly use her influence to advance the 
interests of her lovers, who, on their part, were 
seldom backward in availingf themselves of her 
services. We have seen how, at the beginning of 
the Revolution, she pushed M. de Narbonne into 

lOI 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the office of Minister of War, and how he repaid 
her with ingratitude. The time was coming when 
she could be helpful in similar ways to other friends. 
In March 1795, M. de Stael resumed his 
position as Swedish Ambassador in Paris. In 
May of the same year Madame de Stael joined 
him there, and reopened her salon, establishing 
relations not only with her old Royalist friends, 
but with such prominent politicians as Boissy- 
d'Anglas, Tallien, and Barras. Her position, 
however, was delicate and difficult; and her 
manoeuvres were hardly compatible with her 
diplomatic status. Her husband was insolently 
slapped on the back by a hot Republican and 
called a " foreign spy " ; and she herself would 
probably have been expelled if she had not 
retreated. A letter from her father to Henri 
Meister, dated January 2, 1796, announces her 
arrival at Coppet, adding that " M. Constant was 
her travelling companion." She remained there, 
or in the neighbourhood, throughout that year 
and a portion of the next. Benjamin Constant 
was with her most of the time, and her husband, 
his Embassy having been again suspended, 
joined her late in September 1796. Rosalie de 
Constant's letters, quoted above, were written 
during this period. In the spring of 1797, 
however, we find her once more in Paris, after 
stopping on the way at Herivaux, in Seine-et- 
Oise (where Benjamin Constant also stayed), and 
renewing her activities on her friends' behalf. 

102 



Zeal for Talleyrand's Advancement 

Barras, in his Memoirs, draws a graphic picture 
of her exertions on behalf of Talleyrand, the 
perfumed unbelieving Bishop, whose mistress he 
declares her to have been in the days before the 
emigration. "II faut faire marcher les femmes " 
was, according to Barras, the Bishop's motto ; 
and he describes how Madame de Stael assailed 
him again and again in his Cabinet with the 
demand that he should do something for her 
friend. She entered, he says, with her hair and 
her dress in disorder, threw herself into an arm- 
chair, seized him by both hands, and dragged him 
to a seat beside her, speaking breathlessly. 

" * Barras,' she exclaimed, ' Barras, my friend, 
you are the only person in the world whom I 
can rely upon. Without you we are lost — lost 
altogether. Do you know? But no, you do 
not know, or you would not leave me so cruelly 
embarrassed. Do you know,' she continued in 
a voice interrupted with sobs, ' what he has said, 
what he just now repeated to me ? ' 

" ' What who said ? What is the matter, 
madame ? ' 

*' ' Barras, my friend,' she repeated, pressing 
my hands more tightly than ever, and rolling her 
eyes like an epileptic. ' My God, it is of our 
poor Talleyrand that I am speaking to you. Do 
you know what has just happened to him ? ' 

" 'What, madame?' 

*' ' I have just parted from him. Perhaps he is 
no longer alive. He told me that he would 
throw himself into the Seine if you did not make 

103 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

him Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has only 
ten louis between him and starvation.' 

" ' But has he no other resources ? His friends ? ' 

"'His friends? I am one of them myself. 

/ I have supported him up till now, and have been 

/ glad to do it. But now he has no home, whether 

with me or elsewhere ; and when one has no 

ready money and no lucrative profession, and 

nothing in the world but debts, the situation is 

truly cruel. We must get him out of it. My 

dear Barras, we are lost. Talleyrand is going to 

drown himself. He is a dead man if you do not 

make him Minister. If you have absolutely 

disposed of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, give 

him another. He will be equally suitable for it. 

He is versatile ; he is capable of everything.' " 

And so on for many pages, Barras believed, 
or says that he believed, that if he had attached 
"personal and sentimental conditions" to the 
advancement of Talleyrand, Madame de Stael 
would have acceded to them on the spot ; though 
in the end, as we know, the Bishop got his 
preferment on his merits. 

Benjamin Constant was also introduced by 
Madame de Stael to the Director. " I will not 
say," he writes, " which of the two brought the 
other ; for, whatever calumny may have said 
to the contrary, I protest here, to the honour 
of Madame de Stael, that I never really knew 
to which sex she belonged." She led Benjamin 
Constant by the hand, presented him as "a young 
man of prodigious ability who is on our side," 

104 



A Rising Politician 

and the author of a pamphlet entitled De la 
Force du Gouvernement actuel de la France, et de 
la Ndcessitd de sy rallier. B arras perceived his 
talents, and he was, in this way, launched in politics, 
with a prospect of a career — albeit a career which, 
for various reasons, never came to very much. 

The curious thing is, however, that at the 
very time when Madame de Stael was so zealously 
serving his interests Benjamin Constant began 
to feel his fetters gall. Outwardly his life was 
that of a rising politician and a young man 
of fashion. He held his own among the mus- 
cadins and incroyables of the Directorate — those 
elegant dandies who lorded it in the streets and 
salons, now that the reign of sans-culottism was 
over. But these externals did not faithfully 
reflect his inner life, of which we get two striking 
glimpses in two interesting letters written to his 
aunt, Madame de Nassau. The first letter is 
written from H^rivaux on May i8, 1797, and 
the essential passages are as follows : — 

" I write to you, my dear aunt, from the pro- 
foundest solitude, in the midst of my forests, and 
with the feeling that nothing but a greater 
stability in my situation is required to make me 
tolerably happy. I write to ask you if you can 
help me to supply that need. A tie to which 
I cling from a sense of duty, or, if you will have 
it so, from weakness — but to which I feel sure 
that I shall continue to hold fast until a more 
real duty emancipates me from it, since I cannot 
break it without confessing that I am tired of 

105 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

it, which I am too polite to do — a tie which 
plunges me into a world which I have ceased to 
care for, drags me away from the country which 
I love, makes me profoundly unhappy, and can 
only be broken by a shock which I feel myself 
incapable of giving it : such a tie, I say, has held 
me enchained for the last two years. 

" I am isolated without being independent, 
subjugated without being united. I see the last 
years of my life slipping away without either the 
repose of solitude or the amenities of legitimate 
affection. It is in vain that I have tried to break 
my bonds. My character is such that I cannot 
resist the complainings of another by the opposi- 
tion of my will, especially when it is possible for 
me to postpone my emancipation from hour to 
hour without distressing inconvenience. In this 
way I wear myself out in a position unfavourable 
to my tastes, to the occupations which I prefer, 
and to the tranquillity of my life. Besides, 
supposing the tie broken, I shall only find myself 
in a solitude which will intensify the picture of 
the pain, real or imaginary, which I shall be told 
that I have caused. To console myself for this 
I must at least make someone happy. 

" Do you guess, my dear aunt, to what I am 
working up ? To a project which I have had 
in my mind for the last year — about which I have 
written you twenty letters (though I have torn 
them all up). In a word, I am going to ask you 
to find me a wife. I want one in order to be 
happy. And, in order that I may feel for her 
beforehand every sentiment of friendship, I want 
her to come to me from you. ... I should like 
her to have a little fortune ; and as for herself, 

io6 



Revolt and Reconquest 

I would rather that she were Genevese than Swiss, 
because it would suit me, newly naturalised as 
a Frenchman, to marry a Frenchwoman. Let 
her be not more than sixteen, tolerably pretty, 
without any conspicuous defect, of simple and 
orderly habits, capable of supporting life in 
solitary retirement, reasonable enough to be 
willing to live eight leagues from Paris and go 
there but seldom. As for her character — I leave 
that to you. As for wit — I am sick and tired of it." 

This is the first sign of revolt ; and it seems 
to have been the fate of Madame de Stael first 
to conquer men with her wit, and then to weary 
them with it. Again and again we shall see 
how Benjamin Constant found her vivacity over- 
whelming, and how it made him long for the 
quiet domesticities for which, at bottom, he was 
not less unfit than for the life of high-strung 
nervous tension. This time, however, the revolt 
was quickly followed by reconquest ; and in a letter 
dated July i, 1797, we see him retracting. 

"You wish, then, most amiable of aunts, that 
your nephew should remain a celibate. Your will 
be done! I resign myself thereto because my 
legitimate sovereign has returned, and my project 
of insurrection is abandoned. To speak seriously, 
I have received fresh and so great proofs of the 
devotion of the person in question — to whom I 
thought it better, for the moment, both for her 
sake and for my own, to appear less attached — 
that I could not without displaying the most 
lively ingratitude, or without laying up for myself 

107 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

a store of bitter regrets in the future, think of 
doing anything whatever that would be painful 
to her. I beg and entreat you, therefore, my 
dear aunt, to forget the portion of my letter 
bearing on that subject, and, above all, to show 
it to no one, and to remember only those passages 
of it which relate to my sentiments towards 
yourself." 

What, then, we have to inquire, had happened 
between these two letters, accounting for the 
quick revulsion of sentiment? Nothing less, we 
find, than that Madame de Stael, rushing through 
life like a whirlwind, and insisting upon her share 
of all emotions and all experiences, had found 
time to bear yet another child — Albertine de 
Stael, afterwards to be known as Duchesse de 
Broglie, and one of the great Protestant ladies 
of France. Nothing is more clear than that 
Benjamin Constant believed that he, and not 
M. de Stael — who had so long been absent from 
his wife and was so soon to divorce her — was 
the child's father. The proof in these letters 
would almost suffice by itself, and it does not 
stand alone. Other proofs, not less eloquent, 
will greet us, when the time comes to turn over 
the pages of that Journal Intime in which 
Benjamin Constant wrote his secret thoughts 
in cipher, and in which the lonely man's cry 
for the "dear Albertine" whom he loves, and 
whom he would like to have with him always, 
recurs and recurs like a refrain. 

1 08 



CHAPTER X 

M. and Madame de Stael separate — The alleged "duel" with 
Napoleon — Publication of De la Litterature — Death of M. de 
Stael — Why Madame de Stael did not then marry Benjamin. 

It was in the summer of 1798 that M. de Stael 
dejfinitely separated from his wife. The few 
years that remained to him were chiefly given to 
gambling, prodigality, and the heaping up - of 
debts. Madame de Stael, during the same 
period, was perpetually passing to and fro 
between Paris and Coppet, with Benjamin 
Constant often, but not always, in her company. 
She had written (before Byron) that love was 
woman's whole existence ; but her aphorism was 
only true of herself at the hours of agitation when 
love had just departed or was threatening to 
depart. When love was secure, it was an 
episode to be " classed," and indulged con- 
currently with others. It seemed secure at this 
stage ; and the magnet which obviously drew her 
was her ambition to shine in literature, in society, 
and in politics. 

The politics of the period we must largely take 
for granted. They are very complicated ; and 
Madame de Stael's connection with them was 
rather that of an impetuous partisan than an 

109 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

effective force. Her salon might be a centre of 
intrigue and a source of apprehension, but her 
practical influence has been exaggerated. She 
could do a great deal to advance individuals, but 
very little to direct events. Her protegds did 
not remain in leading strings. Talleyrand in 
particular did not, but easily accommodated him- 
self to the new conditions which she resisted. 
Even Benjamin Constant was comparatively in 
favour with the powers which she displeased. 
She always had the air of being dangerous ; but 
circumstances were too strong for her, and she 
never actually became so. 

On one occasion she achieved a great personal 
triumph — when the French, in 1798, invaded the 
Canton of Vaud, to liberate its citizens from the 
yoke of the Bernese, who had subjugated the 
country in 1536, and treated it as a dependency 
ever since. Coppet was on the line of march, 
and Necker, in great alarm, destroyed letters 
and other papers which he feared would be com- 
promising. Thanks to his daughter's influence, 
however, he was assured of the protection of the 
French Republic, and his name was erased from 
the list of proscribed Emigres. Twenty officers 
were entertained by Madame de Stael at Coppet. 
They behaved with absolute correctitude, and 
everything passed off well. 

With the rise of Napoleon, however, 
Madame de Stael's influence began to decline. 
Her admirers are fond of speaking of her "long 

no 



The " Long Duel " with Napoleon 

duel " with the Emperor ; but here again one 
scents exaggeration. The idea of a long duel 
suggests some sort of equality between the 
combatants, and some similarity in the weapons 
used. Those conditions were wanting — and 
were bound to be wanting — in this case. 
Madame de Stael was only one among many 
obstacles that the strong man swept out of his 
path in order that he might get on with the work 
which he had appointed himself to do. He 
could not have salons intriguing against him 
when he was restoring order after a long period 
of confusion. She must support him or take the 
consequences. The alternative was offered to 
her almost in so many words, and she was found 
defiant. The consequence was an injunction to 
remove to a distance of forty leagues from Paris. 
She continued her defiance, making the welkin 
ring with her protestations, tried to make herself 
a figure not less conspicuous than her enemy in 
the eyes of Europe, and so brought down further 
persecution on her head. But she was rather 
a victim who could not be silenced than an 
antagonist to be reckoned with. Napoleon no 
doubt treated her very badly, esteeming her a 
troublesome termagant. But he rather bullied 
than fought her, and to speak of their "duel" is 
a misuse of language. 

This, however, is to travel somewhat beyond 
the scope of the present volume. The ten years 
of exile in which the centre of Madame de Stael's 

III 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

interest in life was to be emotional rather than 
political had not yet begun, and the course of 
certain intervening events must be traced before 
we come to them. 

Of her intimate relations with Benjamin 
Constant there is hardly any mention in her 
letters, and very little in his. We note, however, 
that the maintenance of the liaison is estranging 
him from his excellent aunt, Madame de Nassau. 
In letter after letter he protests against her cold- 
ness to him, which he attributes to this cause. 
At the same time, in his letters to his cousin 
Rosalie, we find indications that his thoughts are 
beginning to stray occasionally from her whom he 
has called his legitimate sovereign. An interest 
revives in the Charlottechen whom we have already 
met, and whom we are to encounter yet again. 

"I should like to know," he asks, "what has 
become of a Madame de Marenholz or de 
Hardenberg, who must be thirty-one years of 
age, and if Victor has seen her. Do not tell me 
where, but only tell me whether he has seen her, 
and whether she spoke to him of me." Having 
received the news he seeks, he writes : " I was 
very much interested by what you told me 
concerning a lady who interested me exceedingly 
in days gone by. I should indeed be frivolous 
and unfeeling if seven short years sufficed to make 
me forget in that way one who is only five-and- 
twenty leagues away from me." Trifling words, 
but perhaps symptomatic of a good deal. 

112 



Publication of De la Littirature 

Charlotte always figures in Benjamin Constant's 
life as the woman to whom his heart turns 
instinctively when he is weary of emotions and 
agitations. Evidently he is feeling that weariness 
now ; for he proceeds, with a reference to 
Madame de Stael : " The fair lady who lately 
arrived from Geneva lives in a whirlwind of balls, 
fites^ and evening parties. Sometimes she drags 
me with her to them, but more often I make my 
escape." 

Madame de Stael's life, indeed, at this juncture 
was a rush with which no man enamoured of 
tranquillity could well keep pace. To all appear- 
ance her social duties filled her days and nights. 
No social gathering was complete without her, 
and she had a finger in every political pie. But 
she was, at the same time, not less busy with 
literary work. She was collecting material for 
her first novel, Delphine — writing to Henri 
Meister for information which she required for it ; 
and in 1800 appeared her essay, De la Littdrature 
consid^rh dans ses Rapports avec les InstihUions 
sociales. 

It is not a work which we need pause to 
criticise with any care. The dust which has 
accumulated upon it in the bookcase is in itself 
no inconsiderable criticism. It is taken down 
from the shelf not by those who are interested in 
the subject, but by those who are interested in 
the author. Literature is the peg on which the 
writer hangs her opinions about things in general ; 
H 113 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

a discourse on literature is the medium through 
which she expresses an ebullient personality. 
She declares for the perfectibility of human 
nature — a belief which, wherever we find it, is 
always an emotion rather than a reasoned 
conviction, common to those who feel good, but 
frame their own moral laws as they go along. 
She alternates flat-footed platitudes with brilliant 
intuitions, not recognising the difference between 
the two things, but being inspired by fits and 
starts. She foresees Csesarism as the deplorable 
end of the Republic, and so, of course, increases 
the sum of her offences against the Caesar that is 
to be. Napoleon sent his brother to warn her, 
but the warning fell upon deaf ears ; for she had 
all her father's pride, and more than her father's 
obstinacy, and was accustomed to pull wires and 
get her way. 

The book had been out about two years — had 
made an immense stir and got into a second 
edition — had been the centre of a controversy in 
which Chateaubriand among others took a hand 
— when the death of M. de Stael gave his wife 
her freedom. He had been ill, and she had 
returned to him in circumstances about which 
very little can be said because very little is 
known. Certainly there is nothing to indicate 
that the return implied repentance for acts of 
infidelity. It was impossible for Madame de 
Stael to repent of anything, because it was im- 
possible to her to believe that anything that she 

114 



Death of M. de Stael 

did was wrong. She anticipated George Sand in 
confusing the call of desire with the voice of con- 
science, and, as has been said above, in "feeling 
good " because of her loyalty to the moral 
standards which her inclination improvised. She 
had, at the same time, however, irresistible im- 
pulses of pity, and an imperturbable conviction 
of the consoling value of her presence to the dis- 
tressed. We do not know whether M. de Stael 
desired her to be with him in his illness or not. 
Perhaps he did ; for he seems to have been a 
weak man and not proud. Perhaps — but the 
speculation is idle. His wife was at any rate 
quite sure that she was wanted. Capable of all 
the emotions in turn, she felt them all intensely 
at their several hours. Connubial emotion was to 
have its turn with the rest. One can almost see 
her possessed by it, and hear her exclaiming, 
" My place is by his side." 

She joined him, and was taking him to Coppet, 
whence he was to travel to Aix-les-Bains, to take 
the waters, when he died at Poligny of an 
apoplectic stroke. " All those," says the Publiciste, 
"who knew M. de Stael, know how well he 
merited, by the gentleness of his manners and the 
natural goodness of his disposition, the affection, 
esteem, and regrets of his family and his friends." 
" You have heard of my trouble," writes his wife to 
Meister, and then passes on to other subjects. 
Benjamin Constant, on the date of his death, the 
news of which had not yet reached him, wrote to 

IIS 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

his friend Fauriel : ^ " Perhaps happiness is impos- 
sible to me, as I cannot enjoy it with the best 
and cleverest of women." 

In due course, however, the news reached him. 
He joined the best and cleverest of women at 
Coppet, and the question came up for discussion 
whether they should avail themselves of their 
freedom to get married. That the question was 
answered in the negative we know, though why 
or by which of them it was so answered is not so 
clear. The general belief is that Benjamin 
Constant made an offer of marriage which Madame 
de Stael declined ; and the theory is borne out by 
a sentence which we find written, seven years 
later, in his Diary : '* I am between two women, 
one of whom did me a wrong by refusing to 
marry me, while the other is about to inflict an 
injury on me by doing so." The statement has 
also been made that Madame de Stael agreed to 
the offer, but imposed an unacceptable condition — 
that she should retain her own name, which she 
had made illustrious. She did not want, she said, 
'* to put Europe off the track — desorienter 
I' Eur ope y 

Very likely she did not. The entanglement 
was such that there may well be several explana- 
tions of the solution found for it, each with its 
element of truth. Probably, however, we come 

^ A politician, principally famous for the rapidity with which he 
resigned the various offices which he held, and subsequently of 
some eminence as an historian. 

Ii6 



A "Distressing" Situation 

nearest to absolute truth in the letters of Rosalie 
de Constant^ who expected the marrriage, and was 
sincerely disappointed that it did not take place. 

Rosalie had considered the question as far back 
as 1796, when there was talk of a divorce, but had 
doubted, rightly, as it proved, whether Madame 
de Stael would have the nerve to seek that 
scandalous solution of the problem. "It is much 
simpler for her," she wrote, "to continue to live 
as she is living now." She deplored, however, 
Benjamin's undignified position as '* cavalier per- 
petually in attendance." He was too clever, and 
too important, she thought, for that ; and she 
describes the situation as *' distressing " to his 
friends. She believes, however, that it is a situa- 
tion which M. de Stael's death must necessarily 
terminate. "Benjamin," she writes, "is coming 
to Coppet. Everybody is putting forward reasons 
against their marriage. It seems to me that it 
cannot fail to take place." 

That was in May 1802. In July Rosalie is not 
so confident. Benjamin has, in the meantime, been 
on a visit to her, and she reports : "His character 
is like that of a wayward child, who always acts 
on the impulse of the moment and can never be 
depended upon. He seemed to me to be very 
much frightened by the idea of the marriage which 
I thought so certain." At the beginning of 
September she visits Coppet, and finds that 
matters have made no progress, though Benjamin 
is "doing the honours" of the establishment. 

117 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" His position here is very curious. He pays his 
court to no one, has everything at his command, 
and grumbles from time to time like a spoilt child." 
Not until August 1804 does she show that she 
has received confidences which enable her to 
understand the situation ; but then she writes : — 

**It seemed to me such a natural thing for her 
to marry Benjamin when she was free that no 
doubt of her doing so occurred to me. It appears 
that they were both so afraid of the step that they 
came to an arrangement. She had other lovers, 
and he had a constant desire to run after other 
women ; but their intellects unite them. No other 
man offers her such intellectual resources as his. 
She is absolutely determined to maintain her hold 
over him, and keeps him by her side, now by 
habit, now by tyranny, and now by requiring 
services from him. He remains, but murmurs." 

This was her statement to her brother Charles. 
Another interesting letter, written to Madame de 
Stael herself, of which only a tattered fragment 
remains, contains this notable passage : — 

*' Ah ! how much I should have loved you if 
you had married Benjamin and made him happy. 
What would I not then have done to deserve a 
little friendship from you ! The identity of your 
feelings in the matter imposes silence upon my 
thoughts and words, but I look back with regret 
upon the wishes which I used to form." 

Reading these scraps, and reading also Madame 
de Stael's statement, made several years after- 
wards, that Benjamjn did propose marriage to her, 

118 



Letting Things Drift 

but with the manner of a man discharging a duty 
and hoping to be refused, we cannot be in much 
doubt as to what happened. Everything happened 
that could happen. The subject was discussed 
in all its bearings, and approached in different 
moods on different days. Everything was said, 
in one mood or another, that could imaginably be 
said ; and every loophole was left for every 
possible reproach. /The bed-rock fact was that 
the lovers could not be happy either together or 
apart. ^' They had discovered this already, and 
were to rediscover it many times before the end. 
Meanwhile they compromised, and continued to 
compromise, and let things drift. 

Benjamin Constant's relatives thought that, if 
he was not to marry Madame de Stael, he had 
better marry someone else — no matter whom, pro- 
vided that the match were " suitable." In spite of 
experience, they doubtless clung to the notion 
that, if he married, he would "settle down." 
Living, for a time, in close retirement and great 
solitude, in his small country seat in France, he 
toyed with the idea. Rosalie had pointed out to 
him that a certain young lady at Geneva was very 
eligible. " I think of her," he replies, " with 
tenderness, and among the vague ideas which 
charm my retreat I give her recollection the first 
place." But the idea remains vague, and must 
remain so, for good reasons. 

" Consideration for a person who, though she has 
119 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

more drawbacks than this lady, has also much more 
real and much higher merit, controls me to-day as 
it has always controlled me. Nothing would be 
more unendurable to me than that this person 
should be unhappy or should suffer, and I should 
think no sacrifice too great to avoid being the 
cause of her unhappiness. Give me a few letters 
about her too. Your letters shall be scrupulously 
burnt, and you shall not be compromised in any 
way." 

That is the |real and invincible reason. He 
mentions others — that he has vowed himself to a 
solitary life with which the lady whose heart and 
hand are proposed to him would be bored ; that 
her desire is to be married anyhow, and not to be 
married to him in particular ; and that this desire, 
" though perfectly legitimate, is not very flattering 
to the bridegroom." But having given these 
reasons, he soon harks back to the thought that is 
uppermost in his mind. Estranged from Madame 
de Stael, he pleads for news of her. 

" I know, my dear Rosalie, how you dislike 
speaking to me of a person interesting to both of 
us, whose qualities and defects are sometimes the 
charm and sometimes the torment of my life. I 
am going nevertheless to ask you to conquer this 
repugnance. I claim that from your friendship 
for me. It is perhaps the most important service 
that you could render me at the most important 
crisis of my fate. 

" You can depend upon it that, two minutes 
after your letters have been read, they shall be 

120 



A Strange Letter 

burnt, and your name shall not be so much as 
mentioned. Besides, it is not that I want to have 
an explanation with her or to justify myself in 
anybody's eyes. It is for my own satisfaction 
alone that I should like to be informed — because 
I am unhappy about the unhappiness of which 
I am told that I am the cause, and because, if I 
could be assured that this unhappiness has ceased, 
and above all that another object of interest dis- 
tracts her at the moment when her distress is 
depicted to me in the most painful colours — my 
calm would return to me, the remorse which 
I feel, and which tortures me, would cease, and I 
should be able to continue in my freedom without 
having my plans and my life upset any more by 
the supernatural influence of her voice and her 
letters, and her assurance that she cannot live 
without me, and that I make her suffer." 

It is the letter of a man who has lost his way 
in life, and it reads the more strangely when we 
know that Benjamin Constant was in regular cor- 
respondence with Madame de Stael at the time 
when it was written, and find him insisting that 
his letters to Rosalie must on no account be 
shown to her. " I always write to her," he says, 
"with great consideration for her feelings, only 
laying before her such of my sentiments as can 
cause her pleasure. I tell her nothing that is 
untrue, but I do not tell her all the truth. Con- 
sequently, whereas she complains at present of 
the indifference of my letters, she would be indig- 
nant at their perfidy if she saw this one, and a 

121 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

thing would happen to me which has happened a 
hundred times before, and will, I think, always 
happen : I. should be condemned for the good 
which I desired to do, and the pain which I was 
anxious to avoid giving." He cannot, however, 
he continues, remain any longer the amant en 
tilre of a woman whom he is not going to marry ; 
and he concludes : — 

" You alone have done me a little good. You 
alone have given me the strength to resist a 
torrent to which I had been painfully yielding for 
years. If I were not confident that you would 
approve of my conduct, I should suffer much more 
than I do." 

But if Benjamin Constant believed that he 
could resist the torrent for more than a few weeks, 
he had misjudged his strength, as we are now 
about to see. 



122 



CHAPTER XI 

Publication of Delphine — A roman - a - clef — Necker writes a 
novel — Social life at Coppet — And at Geneva — Correspond- 
ence with Camille Jordan — He refuses to travel with Madame 
de Stael in Italy — She goes to Germany with Benjamin Con- 
stant instead. 

Delphine was published about six months after 
M. de Stael's death, in November 1803. It is 
long — very long — a great deal too long for modern 
tastes. The story is told in letters, and there are 
218 of them, covering 698 pages of small print. 
The readers who do not read the book are nowa- 
days in the majority, even in France. Times 
change, and our tastes change with them. It made 
a great stir at its hour, however ; partly because it 
was by Madame de Stael, who could not do so much 
as cross the room without making a stir ; partly 
because of the allegation that it attacked morality. 
Into the moral side of the question we need not 
enter. In polemics morality is seldom clearly dis- 
tinguished from the conventional hypocrisies of a 
period. The distinction was certainly too subtle 
for Madame de Genlis, who was Madame de 
Stael's principal assailant ; and the interest which 
it is still possible to take in the novel in no way 
depends upon the views which it expresses by 
implication upon such matters as divorce and 

123 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

suicide. We must read it, in the first instance, as 
a roman-a-clef, and in the second place as a 
mirror of the writer's mind. 

Several of the characters are drawn from well- 
known people. The domesticated Madame de 
Cerlebe is no other than the author's cousin, 
Madame Necker de Saussure. The original of 
M. de Lebensei — " the most remarkably brilliant 
man whom one could conceivably encounter " — is 
as obviously Benjamin Constant. Talleyrand 
was another of her models, and he knew it. "I 
hear," he said to her, "that you have put both 
me and yourself into your romance — and that we 
are both disguised as women." He indeed ad- 
mittedly figured in it as Madame de Vernon, so 
seductively amiable in her manners, yet at heart 
so unscrupulously selfish. It was the novelist's 
revenge upon the Bishop, whose motto had been 
"II faut faire marcher les femmes," — who had 
made use of her when he was friendless, but had 
dropped her when her intimacy seemed likely to 
compromise him in Napoleon's eyes. And she is, 
of course, herself Delphine. If she is not dis- 
guised as a woman, she does at least appear in 
the disguise of youth and beauty. 

The novel is not, however, like Benjamin 
Constant's Adolphe, a veiled autobiography. 
Nothing had happened in the author's own life 
corresponding to the sensational incidents related. 
The correspondence is only on the plane of 
thought and feeling; and it was solely this 

124 



Personal Sentiments in Delphine 

correspondence that Madame Necker de Saussure 
had in her mind when she wrote that " Corinne 
is the ideal Madame de Stael ; Delphine is the 
real woman as she was in the days of her youth." 
The antithesis is perhaps a little forced ; but it is 
at any rate true that Madame de Stael put a great 
deal of herself into Delphine, and that we can 
trace through it not only the sentiments on which 
she lived, but also the marks of the sentimental 
experiences which she had undergone. 

She is crying for happiness throughout the book, 
almost as a child cries for the moon. Happiness 
in marriage is the ideal — but it is so hard, so rare, 
and '* fate has decided against a woman from the 
day on which she marries a man whom she does 
not love." There is nothing for her but "to ex- 
tinguish her sentiments and let her heart dry up." 
But that too is hard, even for a woman whom 
beauty has not favoured : '* Many men have en- 
nobled a natural ugliness by the laurels which 
they have gained, but love is women's whole 
existence ; the story of their lives begins and ends 
with love." It is a sentiment which we have met 
before in the Essay on the Influence of the Passions ; 
and it seems to lead us at least half-way to Madame 
de Stael's second ideal — h^rpisaller — happiness in 
love, without reference to marriage. Corinne, pub- 
lished four years later, is its formal manifesto ; but 
already, in Delphine, it appears to be foreshadowed, 
and already, as we know, Madame de Stael had, 
in practice, inclined to the pursuit of it. We 

125 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

seem to read the record of experience in this 
reflection : — 

"In general, I think, a man whose character is 
cold easily wins the love of a woman whose heart 
is passionate. He captivates and holds your 
interest by making you believe in a secret which 
he does not express ; while his lack of self- 
abandonment arouses, for the moment at least, 
a woman's anxious and impressionable tempera- 
ment. Liaisons so formed are not perhaps the 
happiest and the most durable, but they have 
the more power to agitate the soul that is weak 
enough to yield to them." 

Such sentiments are only written down by 
women who have discovered them to be true ; 
and we know who had taught them to Madame 
de Stael. Probably General Guibert in the first 
instance ; certainly M. de. Narbonne in the second; 
possibly Talleyrand in the third ; unquestionably 
Benjamin Constant in the fourth. Not one of 
them belonged to the category of men who gush. 
Each of them in turn, in his relations with Madame 
de Stael, had seemed to wear a mask of indiffer- 
ence, to remove it, and to resume it. Sometimes it 
had been her fate to tear off the mask violently 
and find that indifference itself was underneath. 
Hence the extreme bitterness of her bitter cry. 

The time round about the publication of 
Delphine was mostly spent in Switzerland. 
Madame de Stael had received a hint from the 
highest quarters that she had better stay there, 

126 



Social Life at Coppet 

and she took it. She had her children to educate, 
and her father to look after. The old man was 
so excited by the success of his daughter's novel 
that he too sat down to write a work of fiction. He 
had maintained in conversation that the domestic 
affections might, no less than passionate love, lead 
up to tragedy, and his story was an exercise upon 
the theme. Suites Funestes dune seule Faute, 
*' The Disastrous Consequences of a Single Error," 
is its somewhat tract-like title. Let those read it 
who can. It has the merit, at any rate, of brevity. 
Certain social distractions also mitigated the 
exile. Madame de Stael had her own society 
at Coppet, and the society of Geneva was open 
to her. In the lists of those whom she received 
at her home we meet the names of Sismondi,^ 
Bonstetten,^ Madame de Krudener,^ and Madame 
Recamier ; but our picture of the Coppet Salon 
will be better deferred until we come to its later, 
palmier period. Of the occasional visits to Geneva 
there is a picturesque account in the Bibliotheque 
Universelle from the pen of Mallet d'Hauteville. 
The parties which she attended, he says, "had 
something of the stiffness and etiquette of a 
Court ; " and he continues : — 

" There were times when this little foreign Court 
invaded the drawing-rooms of the town. The 

^ The economist and historian. 

^ At one time Bernese Governor of Nyon. An amateur of 
letters, and a friend of Gray. 

3 Author of Valerie. Afterwards she found religion, and became 
a missionary. 

127 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

folding-doors used to be thrown wide open, and 
the authoress entered at the head of her retinue. 
She was attired as a Sibyl, just as she is repre- 
sented in her portraits, with her black hair framed 
in her turban, and her fingers waved a little spray 
of leaves, which moved faster and faster to keep 
pace with her thoughts. Outside the circle of 
those who took an active part in the conversation 
was grouped a ring of silent listeners ; while young 
ingenues, observing the celebrated lady from a 
distance, wondered how it was that she inspired 
such lively sentiments of regard." 

This homage, however, did not content her ; 
and she found still less satisfaction in the beauty 
of the scenery. She could look at Mont Blanc, 
and sigh for the gutter of the Rue du Bac. She 
was taken for a trip to Chamonix, and returned. 
Mallet d'Hauteville tells us, "breathless and in- 
dignant, wanting to know what crime she had had 
to expiate by a visit to this terrible country." 
Paris was her Rome, her Mecca, her Jerusalem, on 
which her eyes were always fixed. "Actualities," 
she wrote to Gerando,^ " are what exiles such as 
we are live on. My father and I are not so fond 
of rustic life as you, and we are eager for anecdotes 
even in the presence of Mont Blanc." 

She seems, at this period, to have been corre- 
sponding with everybody about everything. She 
wrote about the philosophy of Kant to Villers, 

* Marie-Joseph de Gdrando (1772-1842) was a voluminous writer, 
chiefly on educational subjects ; an authority, notably, on the 
education of deaf mutes. 

128 



Camille Jordan 

who had lately introduced the transcendental 
teaching to French readers, and who was much 
too polite to tell her that she did not understand it. 
She inquired from Gerando about her early love, 
M. de Narbonne. Did he still think of her ? Had 
he read Delphine,2ind, if so, what did he say about it? 
She laments, again and again, that she is, and has 
reason to be, unhappy. " I have come to the 
conclusion," she tells Gerando, "that suffering 
is the natural condition of human kind, and I live 
with a pain in my heart which is like a physical 
ailment." 

In the midst of all this, however, we find her 
unfaithful, at least in thought, to Benjamin 
Constant, and temporarily admitting a rival to 
her affections, in the person of Camille Jordan. 

He was a journalist and minor politician of the 
period. During the Terror he had become an 
^migrd as the consequence of his conduct at the 
revolt of Lyons, and he had been driven into exile a 
second time through his opposition to the Govern- 
ment of the day. Now he was back again, and 
was on terms of intimacy with Gdrando, who was 
living at Madame de Stael's country seat at Saint- 
Ouen. That was how her friendship with him 
began; and already in 1801 we find her writing 
to Gerando about him. 

" I have," she confesses, "the most tender feel- 
ing for him ; and it is a painful thought to me 
that you will find him a wife, and that he will thus 
have affections which will thrust me away from 
I 129 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

him. I shall write my first letter to him to warn 
him against matrimony." 

She did more than this, as we know from the 
collection of her letters which Sainte - Beuve 
published in the Revue des deux Mondes. This 
is the first passage which seems to indicate 
something more than sisterly regard : — 

" I had a lock of my hair which used to belong 
to poor M. de Stael. I was meaning to send it 
to you, but you appeared so engrossed in admira- 
tion of Madame de Krudener's fair tresses that I 
feel shy of offering my own black locks, and they 
shall stay where they are until we meet again." 

But that should not be loner if Madame de Stael 
could help it. There follows an invitation — " not 
to be mentioned even to Mathieu or to our good 
friend (Gerando) " — to travel in Italy. 

** I have money enough to arrange for you to 
make an agreeable journey practically without 
expense to yourself. Benjamin will be in Paris 
for the winter. ... If you do not agree to this 
plan which I have at heart, do not speak of it to 
anyone, for I must not allow this idea to cool the 
affection of my other friends. To forget all that has 
been troubling me during the last six months — to 
forget it with you whom I love so well under the blue 
Italian sky — that is what will make me happy." 

Camille Jordan, however, excused himself; and 
in the next letter we read : — 

" I knew very well, my dear Camille, that what 
no 



Love Merges into Friendship 

is commonly called reason was not on the side of 
my proposal ; but I felt a passionate desire for 
something better than reason when this idea came 
to me. Let us say no more about it. . . . My 
revenge now limits itself to the wish that when 
you read Delphine you may be sorry that our plan 
has vanished into thin air." 

That was the end of the episode, though by no 
means the end of the friendship ; for, in Madame 
de Stael's case, friendship and love always merged 
into one another by infinitely fine gradations. 
When she could not be a man's mistress, she was 
always willing to be a sister to him. That had been 
the end of her relations with M. de Narbonne ; that 
was the end of her relations with Camille Jordan. 
Presently, in spite of her warning, he got married ; 
and her letter of congratulation ran as follows : — 

" I admit that I am not very fond of seeing 
my friends get married, but when they do so, I 
should be a very indifferent friend if I did not try 
to enter into their feelings. If I meet Madame 
Camille, I shall be as nice with her as I have been 
with you. Is not that as it should be ? " 

And she kept her word. She complained, in a 
subsequent letter, that Camille was "stiff" with 
her. But she also sent her compliments to 
Madame Camille, — "provided she is willing to 
receive them." 

For the moment, however, all her activities 
were directed to obtaining permission to reside in 
Paris. She set her friends to work. Her father 

131 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

petitioned the Emperor on her behalf — fragments 
of the rough drafts of his petition are treasured 
among the Coppet archives — but all in vain. It 
was evident that she must come to Paris without 
leave or not at all. The breach of the Peace of 
Amiens, and the massing of the Army of England 
at Boulogne, seemed likely to monopolise 
Napoleon's attention, and there was a chance — 
especially as his brother Joseph was her friend — 
that he would forget to turn her out. At least, 
it should be safe for her to settle somewhere near 
Paris ; so she packed and started. 

First she visited Madame R^camier at Saint- 
Brice, and nothing happened. Then she settled 
at Mafliers, about ten miles from the capital, and 
things began to happen. "It is determined by 
the Government," Fouch^ had written, "that this 
foreigner shall not rem.ain in France." Madame 
de Genlis, her virtuous rival in literature, had 
whispered to the First Consul, not only that she 
was in France, but also that the road to her house 
was enlivened by the conversation of her visitors. 
She received a hint to move, and the hint was 
followed by a visit from an officer oi gendarmerie, 
conveying the order that she should set off within 
four-and-twenty hours. She protested ; and he 
used his discretion to the extent of allowing her 
to go first to Paris, where she thought her 
friends, Junot and Joseph Bonaparte, might be 
able to get her sentence rescinded. 

They did their best, Joseph went so far as to 
132 



Departure from France 

offer her a temporary refuge at his country seat at 
Morfontaine. She stayed three days there, but 
felt her position painfully. Treated with every 
courtesy, she was nevertheless surrounded by 
officials, and could not display her emotions or speak 
her mind. Where to go ? was her problem. 

" My father," she writes in Dix anndes d'exil, 
" would have received with unspeakable kindness 
his poor storm-beaten bird ; but I feared my own 
emotions of disgust at finding myself sent back 
to a country which I was accused of finding a little 
tedious. I also felt the desire to recover, through 
the good reception which I was promised in 
Germany, from the outrage which the First Consul 
was inflicting upon me. I wanted to oppose the 
kindly welcome of ancient dynasties to the im- 
pertinence of the dynasty which was preparing 
to subjugate France. This sentiment of amour- 
propre carried the day." 

So it was settled that she would go to Germany. 
Joseph Bonaparte hurried to Saint Cloud to 
procure the necessary permission, for which she 
had to sit and wait in a suburban inn, and also 
gave her letters of introduction at Berlin. 
Benjamin Constant, in spite of the Camille Jordan 
episode, — of which perhaps he did not know, since 
the young man had been solicited to hold his 
tongue about it, — was willing to accompany her. 
They set off sorrowfully ; but by the time they 
reached Chalons, he had, she relates, restored her 
to cheerfulness by his "astonishing conversation." 



133 



CHAPTER XII 

Travel in Germany — The German view of Madame de Stael — Life 
at Weimar — And at Berlin — Benjamin Constant's studies and 
amusements — Extracts from his Diary — Death of Necker. 

In a sense, and up to a point, the German journey 
was a triumphal progress. 

The Germans, of course, had their own point 
of view, and made their reservations. They were 
quite sure that Madame de Stael did not under- 
stand their metaphysics, and they were right. " I 
do not like the Forms and the Categories," is a 
sentence from one of her letters about the philo- 
sophy of Kant ; and in another letter she 
expressed the opinion that Kant's views as to the 
origin of our ideas were quite reconcilable with 
those of Locke. When she set out to interpret 
the Kantian doctrine to her countrymen, she para- 
phrased it into cloudy sentimental gush. To the 
horror of Crabb Robinson, who had tried to teach 
her what the categorical imperative really was, she 
began her restatement of the doctrine with the 
emotional qualification : "Pour les coeurs sensibles." 
The Germans, at any rate, knew better than that ; 
and Goethe even went so far as to say that she 
did not appear to have any conception of the 
nature of "the thing commonly called duty ' — a 

134 



German View of Madame de Stael 

thing which she was, indeed, at that stage, a Httle 
apt to confuse with her personal inclinations. 

German poetry too was, to all intents and 
purposes, a closed book to her. She had, it is 
true, outgrown the stage at which she could write 
to Henri Meister : " I flatter myself that I already 
know everything that has been said in the German 
language and everything that is likely to be said 
in it in the course of the next half-century." 
She had begun to learn the language, and could 
read it a little though she could not talk it ; and 
she admitted in theory that the German nation 
had a message to mankind. But whatever may 
have been the case when she had, for several 
years, had Schlegel to prompt her, she certainly 
did not understand the nature of that message 
then. Crabb Robinson said to her, point blank : 
"Madame, you have never understood Goethe, 
and you will never understand him ; " and she 
could think of no better retort than : ** Sir, I 
understand everything that is worthy of being 
understood. Whatever I do not understand is of 
no importance." Most of the Germans were of 
Crabb Robinson's opinion. 

Most of the Germans, again, found Madame de 
Stael too voluble for their taste. Some of them 
resented the necessity of conversing with her in 
French. " I should think it my duty," said Voss, 
"to learn French before oroinp; to France :" and 
he considered that the French ought to learn 
German before going to Germany. To others it 

135 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

seemed shocking that she skimmed lightly over 
the surface of subjects, instead of probing them to 
the bottom in quest of truth. " Madame de 
Stael," wrote Reichardt, "was much fonder of 
comparing th6^ results of her inquiries with her 
personal opinions than of identifying herself with 
the object of her studies." The general com- 
plaint, however, was of the ceaselessness and 
volume of her talk. Goethe, sitting buried in 
reflection at the ducal supper-table, was hurt by 
her remark that he was never really brilliant until 
after he had got through a bottle of champagne. 
Schiller confessed to having had "a rough time" 
in dialogue with her, and declared that her de- 
parture left him feeling like a man who had just 
recovered from a serious illness. 

And yet the progress was a triumph in the 
main. Germany had already interested itself in 
Madame de Stael. " I have to answer so many 
letters (mostly from Germans)," she had written, 
in 1801, "that half my life is thus taken up." 
Some of her writings had been translated and 
discussed. Her arrival was awaited, therefore, 
with a hush of expectation ; and, wherever she 
went, glamour attended her. She v/as something 
more than the comet of a season ; and even those 
who disapproved were dazzled. 

Metz (though Metz was not then in Germany) 
was the first stage. It was there that she wrote 
that she did not know what she would have done 
without Benjamin. But the Prefect Was "per- 

136 



Arrival at Weimar 

feet" for her; and she had her opportunity of 
meetinpf M. de Villers/ with whom she had corre- 
sponded about Kant, though, as it happened, she 
did not find him quite the kindred soul that she 
expected. He had with him, she wrote, "a fat 
German woman whose precise attractions I have 
not been able to discover." What she did discover 
was that those attractions were no negligible 
quantity, but barred the path to intimacy with 
M. de Villers. She made an appointment to meet 
him alone in the Cathedral, and he kept it. But, 
says the editor of the Letters to Gerando, "he 
gave Madame de Stael to understand that he was 
linked by an invincible gratitude to Madame de 
Rodde and her family, though he would always 
behave to his new acquaintance as a devoted 
friend." She wrote him some letters complaining 
that his devotion was too limited in character, and 
then passed upon her way. 

At Frankfort there was a delay, owing to the 
illness of Albertine de Stael, who caught scarlet 
fever ; and it was not until the middle of December 
that the party arrived at Weimar. 

No one needs to be reminded that Weimar was 
in those days the Teuton Athens. Goethe, 
Schiller, Wieland, and Herder were the great 
fixed stars of its literary firmament. The life 
was homely, but the ideas were not straitlaced. 
Uncongenial couples divorced each other without 

1 M. de Villers first introduced Kant's philosophy to the French. 
He became Professor of Literature at Gottingen. 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

malice, and lived happily ever afterwards. Duke 
Charles Augustus was the father and brother of 
his people. Duchess Louise was their hostess. 
Madame de Stael was at once made the most 
welcome of their guests. For a long time she 
supped every night at the Palace ; and with the 
Duchess she formed a memorable friendship, the 
recollection of which is kept alive by an interesting 
correspondence, extending over a period of many 
years. 

From Weimar Madame de Stael went on to 
Berlin, where she arrived in March 1804; and 
there the Weimar triumph was repeated. Joseph 
Bonaparte's introduction to Laforest, the French 
Ambassador, had made things easy for her. 
Among the personages whom she met were the 
Prince of Orange, the Prince and Princess of 
Brunswick, the Duchess of Courland, Princess 
Radziwill, Brinckmann, the Ambassador from 
Sweden, Fichte, Kotzebue, and A. W. Schlegel, 
whom she engaged to be her son's tutor (and 
incidentally her own) at a salary of 12,000 francs 
a year. A few sentences from a letter to Duchess 
Louise of Weimar will best give the picture of her 
reception at the Prussian Court. 

" I went to see the reigrning- Oueen : and the 
Court, on that day, was veritably imposing. At 
the instant of the Queen's entrance all the instru- 
ments of music began to play, and I experienced 
a truly lively emotion. 

"The Queen, in all the distinction of her 
138 



Gaiety at Berlin 

beauty, appeared. She approached me, and, with 
many other complimentary phrases, addressed to 
me these words, which I really cannot forget : 
* I hope, Madame, that you regard us as persons 
of sufficiently good taste to be extremely flattered 
by your arrival at Berlin. I was very impatient 
to make your acquaintance.' 

" All the Princesses whom I saw at Weimar, 
and who love me, because your Highness has 
spoken of me, came up to kiss me. The King 
spoke to me very kindly, and I was surrounded 
by a kindness which touched my heart. . . . 

" The Prince of Orange and Prince Radziwill 
called upon me on the morning of my arrival, and 
gave me permission to bring Auguste to the 
famous masquerade. All our society, for the 
last twenty days, has been thinking of nothing 
but the masquerade ; rehearsals, dresses, ballets 
filled all their heads ; and though I was a little 
late in my arrival at Berlin I really missed 
nothing on this occasion save a more intimate 
acquaintance with the dancing steps executed 
yesterday. We remained until three o'clock in the 
morning to see the Queen dance in a pantomime 
representing the return of Alexander to Babylon. 
There were two thousand spectators. . . , 

"Several quadrilles succeeded that dance, and 
then Kotzebue arrived as a priest of Mercury — or 
perhaps it was as Mercury himself — with a wand in 
his hand and a crown of poppies on his head. ..." 

The letter was written in bed, the writer's 
head being "still full of the noise of drums 
and trumpets." In a letter to Gerando, of 

139 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

approximately the same date, she tries to describe 
the effect of all this gaiety upon her spirits : " By 
dint of reflection I manage to endure life in spite 
of my exile ; but my heart strings are still wrung .'' 
Her chief satisfaction was probably in her fame — 
that fame which she was presently to describe as 
"a splendid mourning for happiness." Losing 
her sense of proportion, she could easily think 
that she was hardly less famous than Napoleon 
Bonaparte himself. That thought was doubtless 
more comforting than the consolations of German 
philosophy ; and for the time being it seems to 
have outweighed even her sentimental interests. 
But then, on April 18, came the news that her 
father was lying dangerously ill at Coppet ; and 
she posted in all haste back to Weimar, where 
Benjamin Constant was waiting for her. 

In the whirl of excitement Benjamin Constant 
had slipped into the background of Madame de 
Stael's thoughts. It is not even clear how far 
he was willingly in attendance on her. We have 
already seen him, in the months immediately 
preceding his departure, discussing the question 
of marriage, and considering the suitability of 
various possible brides. His cousin Rosalie even 
supposed, for an instant, that he had decided on 
the step ; and his denial breathed no special 
devotion to his mistress. " After so many years," 
he wrote, "of a tie much closer than marriage, 
I need to breathe the air of freedom." And then 
came the tidings of Madame de Stael's exile, 

140 



Benjamin Constant's Diary Begun 

and her appeal, at a time when his political 
activities were temporarily suspended, and all his 
resolutions were scattered. *' I suppose it seemed 
natural to you," he wrote to Rosalie, " that, in spite 
of my resolves of this summer, I did not hesitate 
to render to a person to whom I cannot cease 
to be attached in very sincere friendship all the 
services that I could in the most painful circum- 
stance of her life. It is impossible to complain of 
one's friends at a time when they are unhappy." 

He accompanied Madame de Stael, therefore, 
to Metz, to Frankfort, and to Weimar. At 
Frankfort he helped her, with great devotion, to 
nurse Albertine. At Weimar he took Albertine 
to the theatre — we shall find many indications, 
in the course of the narrative, of his passionate 
fondness for the child ; but his attentions to the 
mother were not, at the time, conspicuous, and 
Crabb Robinson was even disposed to be sceptical 
of the gossip as to his relations with her. 

His time was largely given to study. He was 
writing a History of Religions — the same History 
of Religions which he had begun to write on the 
backs of playing-cards in the boudoir of Madame 
de Charriere. He was not to finish it for many 
years to come ; for his views on religion were 
always changing, and the necessity of recasting 
his work was always with him. Moreover — what 
is more important for our purpose — he began, in 
January 1804, the composition of that marvellous 
diary known as the Journal httime. He wrote 

141 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

it in Greek characters, as an indication that it 
was private and confidential ; but it was, of 
course, easy enough for the inheritors of his 
papers to decipher it, and it was first printed 
in the Revue Internationale in 1887, and has since 
been reprinted, though there exists no Enghsh 
translation of it. It is a faithful record of events, 
and also of the diarist's inner life — a unique 
example of keen and candid introspection. Read- 
ing it, we feel that we know the lover of Madame 
de Stael far better than either she or any of his con- 
temporaries knew him. In telling the remainder 
of the story we will follow it wherever possible. 

The earlier entries are chiefly about his work 
and his German acquaintances. Goethe is full 
of wit and new ideas — "mais c'est le moins bon- 
homme que je connaisse." Wieland's is a French 
intelligence — "cold as a philosopher and light- 
headed as a poet." Herder resembles "a soft 
warm bed in which one dreams agreeably." A 
dinner with the Bethmanns suggests the remark 
that "the commercial spirit is a tiresome thing," 
nothing more important having transpired in the 
conversation than that somebody had killed five 
snipe that morning. And so forth ; even approba- 
tion being expressed in epigrams, but due thanks 
being always rendered for any helpful idea on the 
History of Religion. The Germans, it appears to 
Benjamin Constant, differ from the French in that, 
even when they are dull, as often happens, they 
are nearly always sane and well-informed. 

142 



Extracts from the Diary 

By degrees, however, the Diary becomes more 
intimate. " A charming child ! " is the entry when 
Albertine is taken to the theatre ; but we read 
some way before we find any mention of Madame de 
Stael. " A letter from Madame Talma " is the first 
allusion to a relation to which we shall find further 
references ; but the general impression is that 
the writer is weary of women. At one moment, 
indeed, when he has gone to Leipzig and is alone, 
he exclaims: "There is nothing in the world so 
good, so loving, and so devoted as a woman ; " 
but this utterance seems more characteristic : — 

" Dined with a number of women — brilliant 
women. Their brilliance consists of bustle with- 
out purpose — entirely a creation of Society, and 
in consequence artificial. So long as they are 
a little pretty that is all very well. Our physical 
interest in them makes us pardon the useless and 
ineffectual agitation of moral nature. But at a 
certain age women are no longer fit for society. 
There remains for them the ro/e of friends — but 
of friends kept in retirement, receiving confidences 
and giving advice to men in whose interest they 
fill only the second or third place." 

And what Benjamin Constant says of women 
in general, he also says of certain women in 
particular. There is a Madame Schac .... 
whom we need not try to Identify, from whom he 
receives a di//e^ tendi^e. "Poor woman!" is his 
comment. He is sure she would be better off in 
Oriental retirement ; and he writes mournfully : — 

143 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" I write to Madame de Schac .... to take a 
sad, respectful, and tender farewell of her. Here 
is another inclination towards me which I do 
not desire. And the time will come when even 
that sort of thing will not be offered to me. 
Why are youth and beauty so proud ? Do we 
never find humility and gentleness save when 
youth and beauty have departed ? " 

"A desirable woman! Cest HEnferl" is the 
comment on another lady, with whose husband 
Benjamin wants to go out to supper, in order 
that he may escape from her attentions ; and 
then comes another general outburst, which is 
evidently directed at Madame de Stael, though 
there is no mention of her name. 

** The attachment of some women, and the sway 
which they maintain over a man, to the great 
astonishment of the world at large, may be 
compared to the fatal sleep which overtakes 
travellers on the Great Saint Bernard. These 
travellers are not satisfied with their position, 
but they give way to the sensation of the moment, 
which every passing instant makes more difficult 
to resist. And death comes to them while they 
are making up their minds to get up and go." 

That was written on the road from Weimar 
to Switzerland, where Benjamin had business 
to transact. As he bowled along in his post- 
chaise, he read Greek, — like a man of taste he 
much preferred Sophocles to Euripides, — reviewed 
his situation, and tried to fix his plans. He 

144 



Satisfaction in Literary Pursuits 

wrote to Madame de Stael, recommending one 
Screiben as a tutor, but reflected : " The main 
thing is to know that he is the sort of man who 
will teach the children in addition to interesting 
the mother." But he tried to picture his own 
future without reference to her. 

" Whence come the sad and sombre ideas which 
overwhelm me to-day ? Have I then lost all 
power over myself? Is not my destiny in my 
own hands ? Have I not recovered a power of 
work beyond what I had hoped for? In order 
to be happy I only need the will to be so. I 
should be so if I could make up my mind to three 
things : to live a purely literary life ; to keep 
aloof from public affairs which I have quitted 
through a perfectly irreproachable line of conduct ; 
to settle in a country in which I find light, 
security, and independence. That is all that I 
require. I wish all my efforts to tend to those 
ends. I must find a means of fixing my whole 
life in literary pursuits. Literature will satisfy 
all my aspirations. The things I know and the 
things I learn give me sufficient joy. If I lived 
for a hundred years, the study of the Greeks 
alone would be enough for me. I am reading 
the Antigone. What an admirable man was 
Sophocles ! " 

Then he analyses. Why is it that, whatever 
he does, people are always able to make out 
that he is in the wrong? It must be because 
he is sensitive, and because he is not a fool. 
"When one is a fool, one has all the fools on 
K 145 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

one's side." And so to Lausanne, where his 
cousins and his aunts renew their advice to him 
to marry and settle down. He cannot stand the 
place. It is too dull and stupid. No one there 
takes any interest in his literary pursuits. " No 
one can understand what I say about anything." 
He will go back to Germany and settle there. 
His work shall be the one interest, the one con- 
solation, of his life. But then comes sad and 
startling news, upsetting all his schemes. 

" M. Necker is dead. What will become of his 
daughter ? What despair for her in the present ! 
What loneliness in the future! I want to see 
her, to console her, or at least to help her to 
bear up. Poor unhappy woman ! When I recall 
her suffering, her anxiety, two months ago, and 
her lively joy, which was to be of such short 
duration. Better death than this pain. And the 
good M. Necker, how I regret him ! So noble, 
so affectionate, so disinterested ! Who now will 
be the guide of his daughter's existence ? " 

Again he looks into his own heart. He finds 
in himself a double personality — "one always 
watching the other." He is sad, and yet knows 
that the sadness will pass away ; but he will not 
let it — " because I know that Madame de Stael 
needs me not only to console her, but to suffer 
with her." For the moment, therefore, his course 
is clear: "I have decided to. set out again for 
Germany, to meet Madame de Stael, who is on 
her way back." 

146 



CHAPTER XIII 

Madame de Stael returns to Coppet — The reason why she was not 
allowed to go to Paris — She decides to visit Italy — Benjamin 
Constant drags at his chain — Further extracts from his Diary. 

Of the death of Necker, as of the death of 
Napoleon, it may be said that, whereas at one 
time it would have been an event, it was, when 
it occurred, only an item of news. He had risen 
from obscurity to fame ; he had failed ; he had 
been found out ; he had been forgotten. That 
is his biography in a sentence. Napoleon's 
contempt for him was profound. "The old boy 
was maundering," was his comment when Necker 
submitted plans for a French Constitution ; and 
after his death he summed him up as the very 
type of mediocrity — "with his pompousness, his 
fussiness, and his string of figures." 

In the domestic circle, however, incense had 
always been lavishly burnt to him. He himself 
printed the eulogy in which his wife declared 
that " if men were originally angels, then I think 
that M. Necker must have been charged in that 
character with the task of clearing up chaos 
before the Creator deigned to descend and make 
the world." His daughter worshipped him 
no less, and loved him with a more ardent 

147 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

passion. She even uttered the singular regret 
that she had not known her father as a young 
man — "for then our lots might have been linked 
for ever ; " and now her cry was that " the waves of 
life have swept everything away from me except 
this great shadow on the summit of the mountain 
pointing to the life to come." It was indeed im- 
perative that Benjamin Constant should go to her. 
Sismondi accompanied him. " He has been 
told so often," Benjamin comments, "that he is 
rendering a great service that he is almost 
frightened by the grandeur of his own conduct." 
But he himself was making the journey more as 
a comforter than as a lover. He knows indeed 
that he will find "the person whom I love best 
in the world abandoned to the most terrible 
despair " ; but his next comment is : — 

" Destiny seems pleased to condemn me to 
wear out my health, which is good, and my 
talents, which are sufficiently distinguished, with- 
out attaining either pleasure or glory. The 
moment is approaching, however, when I must 
set my life in order, and make use of the years 
and faculties that remain intact to leave some 
memory behind me. My most urgent task is 
to help my unhappy friend. But, however her 
lot may be arranged, my own can only be literary 
and independent. I could not forgive myself if 
I had not made my mark at fifty. At Geneva 
and in Switzerland, one finds neither resources 
nor the stimulus of rivalry. But if I am to 
succeed in France, I must produce a remarkable 

148 



Return to Coppet 

work ; and my present manner of life makes 
that impossible. Then Weimar is the place — 
Weimar, a library, as much pleasure as is 
necessary to prevent me from feeling that I am 
deprived of pleasure, order in my fortune, and 
for once in my life, repose." 

In that mood he arrived at Weimar, where 
"the first moments were convulsive." It was 
his pride that he shared Madame de Stael's 
grief, instead of offering platitudinous consola- 
tions ; and presently he and she and the children 
and Schlegel and Sismondi drove back together 
to Coppet, Madame Necker de Saussure bringing 
Albert de Stael to meet them at Zurich. "Her 
condition," he writes, " is fearful. A strange com- 
bination : this deep, agonising, and genuine grief 
which overwhelms her, joined with her suscepti- 
bility to distractions, her incorrigible character, 
which leaves her all her natural weaknesses, all 
her amour-propre, and all her need for activity." 

Her need for activity found satisfaction at first 
in the writing of her father's life — a sketch which 
her friends considered the best of all her works ; 
but that, after a little while, did not suffice. She 
filled her house with people, and talked, and talked, 
and talked. She souorht to obtain leave to return 
to Paris, while planning a journey to Italy as an 
alternative. 

Joseph Bonaparte, as before, was doing his 
best for her. He was at that time a general on 
duty at the Boulogne camp, whence he wrote 

149 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

urging her to patience, since no one would 
succeed if he did not. She postponed the Italian 
excursion, and stayed on at Coppet, hoping 
against hope. "The rumour," she wrote to 
Joseph, '* has been spread that the Emperor 
means to recall all the exiles on the day of his 
coronation. He would, by this step, give the 
occasion a solemnity superior to that which it 
will derive from all the pomps and ceremonies. 
I mean to stay here until the 15 th of November 
on the strength of this feeble hope." She waited, 
but the hope was not fulfilled — for a reason which 
she never knew. The facts were these. 

The First Consul had lately become Emperor, 
and appointments in the Imperial household were 
being made. The report had reached Madame 
de Stael that one of them was likely to be accepted 
by her previous lover and present friend, M. de 
Narbonne. She wrote to him to say that she 
hoped the report was untrue ; that she thought it 
most unbecoming that members of the aristocracy 
of France should stoop to be "the men-servants 
and chambermaids of the bottrgeois and bourgeoises 
of Corsica." Fearing lest her letter should be 
opened in the post, she entrusted it to a certain 

M. S , who promised to deliver it by hand. 

But, as it happened, M. S was a French spy. 

He delivered the letter at the Department of 
Police, and Fouche showed it to Napoleon. It 
was with difficulty that the Emperor was dis- 
suaded from throwing the writer into prison for 

150 



Benjamin Constant Drags at his Chain 

her insolent words ; and he was absolutely 
resolved that she should not return to France, 
where the Pope was coming to crown him. At 
last, therefore, Madame de Stael got tired of 
waiting, and set out for Italy. " I don't know," 
wrote Rosalie de Constant to her brother Charles, 
" what she is going to do there, unless she expects 
to take the Pope's place during his absence." 

That was towards the end of 1804, about six 
months after the sorrowful return from Germany. 
During all that period Benjamin Constant had 
been near her — sometimes staying in her house, 
and at other times visiting Geneva and Lausanne 
— a prisoner dragging at his chain. We must 
turn again to his Diary for the record of the 
happenings that mattered most to both of them ; 
but we must first try to realise his singular 
position at the time when he made the strange 
confessions which are to follow. 

He was thirty-seven. He had behind him a 
past that had been alternately brilliant and dis- 
solute. He had been a great personage in 
politics, and now he was an exile in effect if 
not in name. Paris was indeed open to him if 
he chose to go there, as he sometimes did ; but 
he belonged to an extinguished Opposition, and 
his political part was, for the time being, over. 
On the other hand, in spite of his strong desire 
for the literary life, he could not settle down to 
it with Gibbon's calm contentment. His past 
forbade. He had accustomed himself to be in 

151 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

love. Women had meant so much to him from 
of old that they were still necessary to him even 
when he thought that he was tired of them. The 
idea of marriage haunted him ; it was only the 
idea of marriage with any given woman that 
was intolerable. So he was doomed to live in 
indecision, drawn this way and that, finding it 
much easier to form new liaisons than to break 
with old ones, reluctant to give pain, yet always 
giving it, distressed at his failure to give his life 
any sort of sentimental continuity, wearing a 
mask of gay cynicism, yet always, at bottom, a 
"self- tortured sophist." Such was the man. 
His story will be best told in his own words. 
The Journal unhappily is not dated ; but the 
extracts which follow all belong to the six months 
succeeding the return to Coppet. We hear in 
them the rumblings of the coming storm. 

"I go to Rolle to see my aunt, Madame de 
Nassau. She is a woman of much intelligence, 
and greatly attached to me ; but the surrounding 
atmosphere has weighed upon her. She has 
adopted all its prejudices, so that there is a kind 
of constraint between us which I only get over 
by means of pleasantries. I think, however, I 
shall succeed in acquiring a reputation for good- 
ness of heart which will enable me to arrange 
my life without having all the world on my back. 
What a task life is when one has begun it badly, 
and what a bore when one does not conduct it 
regularly ! " 

152 



Solitude an Immense Advantage 

" I have not yet got my ideas clearly together 
again. It is impossible. I am interrupted every 
minute. Solitude! Solitude! It is even more 
necessary to my talent than to my happiness." 

" I have been to Rolle, to see Madame de 
Nassau, who is ill. There is too much funda- 
mental opposition in our opinions for us ever to 
feel at our ease together. ... I sleep at Lausanne. 
I cannot depict my joy at being alone. I am 
very fond of everything at Coppet ; but this 
continual society, this perpetual distraction, tires 
and enervates me. I lose all my power for 
action in it, and say to myself bitterly : ' When 
will it come to an end ? ' 

*' I have worked very well. Solitude is an 
immense advantage. But what a society is that 
of Lausanne ! I should die in it. My cousin 
Rosalie is a good creature, but sour-tempered, 
and skilled in the art of saying the sort of thing 
that displeases one coldly, and as if she did not 
perceive what she was doing. A sad gift ! But 
she is a hunchback, and still an old maid at 
forty-five ! Can one expect her to be gentle ? " 

•' Dinner at 's with Auguste. ... I must 

arrange my life in the course of 1804 with 
regularity and independence. It is too bad to 
have neither the pleasure to which one sacrifices 
one's dignity, nor the dignity to which one 
sacrifices one's pleasure." 

" Dinner at Severy's. Unpretending and 
graceful mediocrity. I am tired of my solitude 
here, but I do not want to get married here. 

153 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

My heart is too old for fresh liaisons. I speak 
to no one except with the tips of my Hps." 

" Having received no letters from Coppet, and 
no invitation to return there, I have conceived a 
prodigious desire to do so. The fact is that, 
from the point of view of heart, mind, and self- 
abandonment, I am not well off anywhere but 
there. The other people whom I meet are as 
much strangers to me as the trees and the rocks." 

" The evening ended with a discussion between 
Schlegel and Madame de Stael on the genius 
of conversation. It seems a singular way of 
educating a tutor. It is very tiresome for the 
spectators to see them planted in front of each 
other, Schlegel expressing his contempt for 
society, and she belauding herself for her conversa- 
tional gifts. A reciprocal panegyric, both of them 
praising themselves at the expense of the other." 

"Went to Geneva, and called on the Mes- 
demoiselles de Sellon. Saw Amelie Fabri again. 
She is as muddy-complexioned, as lively, as 
wide-awake as ever. How I should have hated 
her if they had succeeded in getting me to marry 
her ! Yet, in reality, she is very amiable. It is 
my bad luck always to find something impossible 
in every woman whom I think of marrying, 
Charlotte de Hardenberg was tiresome and 
romantic ; Madame Lindsay ^ was forty and had 

^ She is mentioned in Chateaubriand's Mhnoires d^Outre- 
tombe : " Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material 
mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and 
attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of 
character : the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the 
fireside of the last of the Ninons." 

154 



How to Master Life 

two Illegitimate children ; Madame de Stael, who 
understands me better than any of them, will not 
be satisfied with friendship when I can no longer 
offer her love. This poor Amdlie who wants me, 
at thirty-two, has no fortune, and certain ridiculous 
idiosyncrasies which age has confirmed in her ; 
Antoinette, who is twenty, has a fortune, and is 
not absurd, is common in appearance and has 
nothing French about her." 

"In the evening a sad and bitter conversation 
with Pussy.^ She is profoundly unhappy, and 
thinks it is the business of others to relieve her 
sorrow, as if the first condition of not being 
overwhelmed by life were not to master it, and 
make use of all one's own inward resources. 
What can others do against your agitation and 
your contradictory desires ? Against your desire 
for a brilliant place in the world, of which you 
are enamoured because you only see the externals 
of it ; against your coquetry, which is afraid of 
old age ; against your vanity, which makes you 
seek to be conspicuous, while your character is 
incapable of facing the annoyances which one 
always provokes when one seeks to shine? 
What ! You do not want to suffer, and yet you 
spread your wings, and brave the gales, and dash 
yourself against the trees, and break yourself 
against the rocks. I can do nothing to help you 
here. Until you furl your sails, until you recog- 
nise that any settled situation is better than this 
perpetual disturbance, there is no hope for you." 

" Madame de Stael shows me a curious col- 

^ Madame de Stael. 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

lection of letters written to Madame Necker. . . . 
Those from Gibbon are affected and ridiculous 
through the contrast between his love for Madame 
Necker and his ponderous, cold, and precious 
style. Thus, after having written to her that the 
happiness of his life would be to possess her, he 
concludes by saying that he is, with a particular 
consideration, her most obedient humble servant." 

" This evening Schlegel was hurt because 
Madame de Stael teased him ; and, as she never 
gets tired of talking, she wanted to recommence 
an explanation at one o'clock in the morning, 
reserving until after this explanation a discussion 
of matters which have already been discussed a 
hundred times. I was dying to go to sleep, and 
I had a pain in my eyes, but I had to obey her. 
I have never seen a better woman, more gracious 
or more devoted, but I have never known one who, 
without being aware of it, is more continually 
exigent, who more completely absorbs the life of 
everyone near her, or who, with all her qualities, has 
a more positive personality. All one's life — one's 
minutes, one's hours, one's years — must be at her 
disposition ; and when she does let herself go, then 
it is a noise like all the thunderstorms and all the 
earthquakes. She is a spoilt child — that sums 
her up." 

" A gay supper with the Prince de Belmonte. 
Remained alone with Madame de Stael, and the 
storm gradually rose. There was a frightful 
scene, lasting till three o'clock in the morning, 
about my lack of sensibility, my unworthiness of 
her confidence, and the failure of my sentiments 

156 



Literary Glory Preferred to Happiness 

to correspond with my actions. Alas ! I should 
be very glad if I could avoid wearisome lamenta- 
tions relating not to genuine misfortunes, but to 
the universal laws of nature and the advent of 
old age. I should be very glad if I, a man, had 
not to endure the vexations of a woman whose 
youth is leaving her. I wish she would not ask 
me for love after ten years of intimacy, when we 
are both nearly forty years of age, and when I 
have told her, at least two hundred times, that, 
as for love, I have no more of it to give her — a 
declaration which I have never withdrawn except 
for the purpose of calming fits of pain and rage 
which frightened me. If my sentiments do not 
correspond with my actions, I wish she would 
cease to ask me for actions to which she attaches 
so little importance. I must, however, separate 
my life from hers, remaining her friend, or else 
disappearing from the earth." 

" I have read over my reflections on marriage. 
I adhere to them, and I will get married this 
winter." 

" When I consider my fatigued constitution, 
my taste for the country, for solitude, and for 
work, marriage seems to be necessary for me. 
Nevertheless, in spite of this conviction, I prefer 
literary glory to happiness, though without 
cherishing many illusions as to the value of such 
glory. But if I were happy in the vulgar fashion, 
I should despise myself." 

"At this season seventeen years ago I was 
rambling alone through the English provinces. It 
was in that journey that I first discovered the 

15; 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

immense happiness of solitude. I am far enough 
away from it now," 

" A letter to-day from Madame Talma, who is 
coming to Soleure. I will go and see her. 
What happiness ! " 

" My situation is insoluble ; there is no planning 
out my life. I must live from day to day and 
work as much as possible. That is all that is 
left to me." 

'* I have seen the young Laure d'Arlens. If I 
had to get married, I would marry a girl of 
sixteen. There would be a clear gain of the 
three or four years during which a woman of 
that age cannot live an independent life. Very 
likely it comes to the same thing in the end, but 
at least one enjoys this moment of respite. A 
clear gain there ! Then there is the chance that 
one may influence the character that is in course 
of being moulded and turn it in the direction that 
one desires. I do not say that the chance is a 
good one, but when one marries a woman whose 
character is already formed, there is no longer 
any room for doubt on the matter. The char- 
acter already exists, and you do not even know 
what it is. In the case of a girl of sixteen one 
watches the character while in course of formation, 
and, seeing the enemy immediately on his arrival, 
you can take your precautions better." 

" Ten years ago to-day I was in Germany, 
alone, taking proceedings against my wife, treated 
with injustice by the majority of my friends. . . . 
And yet, in the midst of all that, I was perfectly 

158 



The Pretence of Friendship 

happy. My means of happiness were perfectly 
simple. I was alone, and I was at work. Every 
day as it dawned promised me a sequence of quiet 
hours which nothing could disturb. It is the 
period of my life which I now find the greatest 
pleasure in recalling. Since then I have some- 
times enjoyed success and sometimes suffered 
reverse, but calm, solitude, and independence I 
have never had. 

" Under the influence of the people about me 
I was weak enough to marry an ugly woman 
without fortune, older than myself, and, to com- 
plete the list of her attractions, of violent and 
capricious temper. The wrongs she did me 
were of the kind that cannot be forgiven ; but, 
instead of seeking to punish her or to avenge 
myself, I only asked for my freedom. Whence 
an outburst of all manner of wrath against me. 
I was unwilling to allow my wife's enemies to 
dishonour her at their fancy under pretence of 
proving their friendship for me. I have come 
to the conclusion that the motto of friends who 
serve you is always : ' If you do not allow us 
to defend you at the expense of others, and to 
make up for the good which we do to you by the 
greater evil which we do to our enemies, then we 
shall not defend you.' 

" Through my failure to realise this condition 
which friendship attaches to its services, I have 
done myself much wrong." 



159 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Diary continues — Benjamin Constant at Coppet — Attempt of 
his relatives to find him a wife — He goes to Lyons to see 
Madame de Stael off to Italy. 

The Diary continues. Owing to the state in 
which the manuscript was found, it is impossible 
to be quite positive that every entry has been 
printed in its proper place ; but the story which it 
unfolds is not one in which dates matter very 
much. It is important to know that certain things 
happened — not to know whether they happened 
on a Monday or a Saturday. The progress to 
the crisis was not, in any case, dramatically 
continuous. The crisis was to come suddenly — 
through a woman — but not yet. In the meantime 
Benjamin Constant drifted to and fro, suffering, 
as we can see, a far keener mental agony than the 
woman who complained of the waning of his love 
for her. She, having paid her tribute to her 
father's memory, was preparing a fresh triumph — 
preparing to conquer Rome and Naples and 
Milan, as she had conquered Weimar and Berlin. 
He, unable to live either with her or without her, 
was deploring his own weakness, toying with 
other amours, toying with the idea of marriage, 
longing for solitude, yet unable to endure it, the 

1 60 



Visit to Madame Talma 

miserable victim of a divided mind. Let his Diary 
speak again. 

"To-day Madame de Stael is at Geneva. 
Bonstetten, Schlegel, Sismondi, and I dined like 
schoolboys whose head master is away. Strange 
woman that she is ! Her domination is inexplic- 
able yet very real over everyone near her. If 
only she could govern herself, she would be able 
to govern the world." 

" I start to see Madame Talma ^ at Soleure." 

'* The pleasure of seeing Madame Talma at 
Soleure was spoiled by the serious condition of 
her son. I fancy she is trying to deceive herself, 
as so many do. . . . She needs excitement, and to 
deaden her feelings. Happy is he who can fall 
back upon himself, and does not ask for happiness, 
whose life is in his own thoughts, and who waits 
for death without exhausting himself in vain 
endeavours to soften or embellish his life." 

** I never cease thinking of my situation. I am 
agitated and distracted by a miserable weakness 
of will. There never was anything so absurd as 
my indecision. Now I incline to marriage, now 
to solitude ; now I want to live in Germany, now 
in France ; and I always hesitate because, in 
reality, there is nothing that I can do without. If 
I have not got rid of all these embarrassments in 
the cpurse of the next six months — embarrassments 
which only exist in my own imagination — I am 
no better than an imbecile, and will no longer take 
the trouble to listen to my own maunderings." 

^ The divorced wife of the actor. 
L l6l 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

** A letter from Madame Dutertre/ Here is 
another who, having a lively love of freedom, 
having succeeded in reconquering it at the age of 
twenty-five, and possessing in addition a consider- 
able fortune, is in a hurry to spoil her life over 
again by contracting a fresh tie which to-day 
oppresses her as much as, and more than, the first. 
One only meets people who do not know how to 
make proper use of their advantages. The reason 
is that the enemy of man is within him." 

" Received a letter from Madame Talma. She 
is the person whom I love, not indeed the most 
passionately, but with the least admixture of other 
feelings, and the least regret. Her son is better. 
When he was so ill at Soleure, Madame Talma 
was a singular example of the fanatical attachment 
with which people cling to the opinions of their 
youth. Brought up as an unbeliever, this mother 
was ardently anxious that her son should not 
believe in the immortality of the soul, and I fancy 
she would have argued with him when he was 
dying if he had demanded consolations of that 
kind. And yet Madame Talma is a good woman, 
and all her affections are concentrated upon this 
child. Inexplicable human nature ! " 

"Called upon Mile Bontemps. I fear I 
have made but a poor response to her affectionate 
interest in me. If only I knew what I wanted, 
I should know better what I am doing." 

" Twenty years ago to-day (October 9th) I was 
in Scotland, fairly happy, alternately living with 

^ Nee von Hardenberg, and married, e7i preinilres noces, to 
M. von Marenholz. \ 

i6z 



Madame de Charri^re's Last Years 

some friends and boarding with an excellent 
family in the country, three leagues from Edin- 
burgh. Several of these friends are dead ; the 
dearest of them is mad. A new generation has 
grown up in the family, and the new generation 
does not know me. Such is life ! " 

" Madame de Stael is in a good mood, gentle 
and amiable. Nevertheless, there is a corner in 
her character which I do not like. I mean an 
absolute want of pride, and a need of always 
standing well with the authorities — a need which 
contrasts strangely with the very little authority 
which she exercises over herself, and causes 
continual inconsistency in her conduct, with the 
result that every party in turn suspects her of 
intrigue and bad faith. She is in consequence 
guilty of a kind of duplicity which is harmful not 
only to her own dignity and success, but also to 
that of her friends." 

'* Pussy Cat is in a bad temper because I will 
not sit up late at night. It seems clear that I 
shall have to get married in order to be able to 
go to bed in decent time. 

" I received a visit to-day from Henrietta 
Monachon, who drew me a graphic picture of her 
last years with Madame de Charriere. 

** Seven years have passed since I last saw her ; 
ten since all relation between us ended. How 
easily then I broke all ties that tired me ! How 
sure I was that I could form others when I chose ! 
What a sense I had that my life was my property, 
and what a difference ten years have made to my 
feelings ! Everything seems precarious and about 

iO"3 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

to escape from me. That which I have does not 
make me happy. I have passed the age at which 
gaps can be filled, and I tremble to renounce 
anything w^hatever, not feeling that I have the 
power to put anything else in its place." 

" Madame Du Deffand used to say to M. de 
Pont-de-Veyle, * We have been friends for forty 
years. Is not that because we do not love each 
other very much ? ' That is my own history." 

" Sismondi, with whom I take a walk, re- 
proaches me for taking too little interest in him 
and in the world in general. The wretched man 
knows nothing about my position, and how it 
prevents me from disposing freely of my life, with 
the result that I am a shadow running with other 
shadows, and have no power of making plans for 
the future." 

"At dinner there were several guests. I was 
very melancholy, and yet I jested a good deal. 
This contrast is usual with me. At supper too 
there were a good many people. What a melan- 
choly thing is conversation ! Even conversation 
which turns upon interesting subjects leads to so 
little." 

" Out in the evening and meet some amiable 
women, but fate is obstinately unkind to me. In 
the person whom I could marry, and should like 
to marry, there is always something that does not 
suit me. Meanwhile my life advances. I admit 
that it will be all the same when it is over." 

" A walk with Sismondi, who reproaches me 
for never speaking seriously. It is true that, in 

164 



• Schlegel's Amour-Propre 

my present mood, I take too little interest in 
persons and things to be convincing. I am 
satisfied, therefore, to be silent or to jest. That 
amuses me and deadens my feelings. The best 
gift with which Heaven has endowed me is that 
of being amused at myself. I read Sismondi my 
Introduction.^ He was much impressed by it. He 
is not at all a brilliant man, but he has very just 
principles and very pure intentions. Only he 
works very little, and goes out into society, where 
he feels flattered to be received. He does not 
dream that it is only his talent that has opened 
the doors of society to him, and that he is 
sacrificing to the enjoyment of a firstj success the 
means of making others." 

" Here is a pleasing story of Schlegel's amottr- 
propre. One day he read a letter which he had 
addressed to one of his friends. A little while 
afterwards I learnt that this friend was dead. I 
told Schlegel this, and he replied : * Yes, he is 
dead, but he had time to receive my letter before 
he died.' As if this friend had been brought into 
the world to read Schlegel's letter, and having 
read it, might depart in peace ! " 

" I have happily escaped from a party given by 
the Duchess of Courland to the Prefect, with 
music on the Lake. 

" I have again seen Am^lie Fabri. It is a 
great pity that she is old, muddy-coloured, and 
thin. If she were ten years younger I should 
prefer her to any other woman. I could have 
made a charming person of her, on condition that 

^ To the History of Religion. 
165 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

I were already what I have now grown to be. Her 
faults are due simply and solely to the isolation 
in which she has lived. Everyone is amused by 
her lively wit, and, seeing people laugh at what 
she says, she concludes that whatever makes 
people laugh is good to say. 

"It was a year ago to-day that Madame de Stael 
arrived in Paris against my wish and against the 
advice of all her friends whom she had not so 
dominated as to oblige them to speak against 
their consciences. The consequences were sad." 

" An argument with Schlegel on French tragedy 
— bizarre and monotonous. His notions are often 
as grotesque as a madman's." 

" Dinner with Madame Necker.^ She perceives 
in others only the greater or less attention that 
they pay to her. A person whom it is diverting 
to forget by reason of the amazement and anger 
which the forgetfulness causes her. She does not 
think that it is possible to think of anything but 
her. Still that does not make her ridiculous, for 
she has a noble though egotistic character, a 
delicate though artificial wit, and a distinguished 
though withered appearance." 

** Schlegel's brother has arrived. He Is a 
globular little man, extraordinarily fat, with a 
pointed nose issuing from two shining cheeks, 
and underneath this pointed nose a mouth that 
smiles with honeyed sweetness ; fine eyes, a sub- 
dued air, especially when he is not speaking, and 
an icy air when he is listening. His principles 
are as absurd as those of his brother." 

^ Madame de Stael's cousin, Madame Necker de Saussure. 
l66 



Confused Recollections 

" Madame de Stael gave me to read a frag- 
ment of her work on her father. I could not 
restrain my tears. There is a sensibility in it 
the more real because it is free from all affecta- 
tion. Will they laugh at it in Paris .-* I record 
my impresson of it here that it may not change." 

*' Dined with the Duchess of Courland. To 
see her I should say that it only depended upon 
myself to make her think me very agreeable. I 
bore myself so much in Society that it is difficult 
for me to believe that I can please. I am ill. 
Everyone notices how changed I am. I shall 
not be sorry when it is all over. What have I 
to expect from life ? " 

"This is the day of my birth — thirty-seven 
years ago. The best part of my life is over. 
Even if nature is kind, there can only remain, 
free from infirmities, about half the period that I 
have already lived. My life has only left me 
very confused recollections. I am hardly any 
more interested in myself than in other people. 
I know that, up to the age of fourteen, the object 
of great affection on the part of my father, on the 
one hand treated with great severity, but en- 
couraged, on the other, in the wildest vanity, 
I filled all those about me with admiration 
for my precocious talents, and distrust of my 
violent, quarrelsome'disposition. I had no mother. 
They mistook for naughtiness what was only 
amour-propre. From fourteen to sixteen I was 
in a German University, left a great deal too 
much to my own devices, winning successes 
which turned my head, and committing prodigious 
follies. From sixteen to eighteen I studied at 

167 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Edinburgh, and there, for the first time, acquired 
that real taste for study which they had till then 
vainly tried to instil into me. But, after living 
for a year a well-regulated and tolerably happy 
life, I abandoned myself to the passion of gambling, 
and lived in a very agitated, and, I will add, a 
very miserable manner. I next went to Paris, 
with only my own sense to guide me — which it 
did pretty badly. From eighteen to twenty I was 
always in love, sometimes loved in return, often 
tactless and giving myself over to acts of theatrical 
violence which must have been very amusing to 
those who were pleased to criticise me. I then 
went a second time to Paris, where I made the 
acquaintance of all the follies that youth can think 
of, with the temptations that Paris provides. At 
the same time, however, I was living in the society 
of men of letters, in which to some extent I dis- 
tinguished myself. Next, I set out for England. 
It was then that I tasted for the first time the 
inexpressible delights of solitude. From twenty 
to twenty-six I lived in Germany, leading a life 
that was tiresome without actual unhappiness, 
wasting my time and my talents ; and had it 
not been for a revolution that occurred in my life, 
I should have declined gently into stupidity. At 
twenty-seven I was divorced from a first marriage 
contracted in Germany — I have already spoken 
of it. At twenty-seven I commenced an attach- 
ment that was to last for ten years ; then came 
political passions. Now I think I have reached 
a ffurther stage, for all that I desire is repose. 
Shall I obtain it? It always looks as if it would 
be easy to obtain something that one does not 
want ; but when one begins to want the thing 

1 68 



SchlegePs New Religion 

that seemed so easy to get, then the difficulties 
present themselves." 

" I am every day more convinced that one must 
exercise cunning in one's relations both with life 
and with men, whether one wishes to escape from 
one's fellow-creatures or to make use of them. 
Ambition is not nearly so mad a thing as people 
suppose ; for one has to take nearly as much 
trouble to be allowed to live in peace and quiet- 
ness as to govern the world. Nevertheless, so 
far as I am concerned, the die is cast. I want 
to find a country in which one can sleep in tran- 
quillity. Germany is the place for me." 

" My aunt hints that if I marry she will show 
herself grateful. That is, in effect, to promise 
me a fortune four times as large as my own. 
Very likely I shall repent of not having said * yes.' 
But * yes ' would be too much trouble. I give up 
the idea." 

"Schlegel wants to be the leader of a new 
religion. Nothing is more ridiculous than the 
plans of this kind which men form because they 
see that something of the sort succeeds about 
once every ten centuries. I cannot deny that I 
have formed my own. Schlegel says that in all 
religions there are mysteries. Therefore he makes 
a pretence of concealing a portion of his doctrine. 
That is to say, he shows the whole of it, and 
conceals the rest." 

** I do not know why, but I have a presentiment, 
a kind of hope, that Madame de Stael's affairs ^ 

^ Benjamin Constant was trying to obtain permission for Madame 
de Stael to reside in Paris. 

169 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

will succeed. But I am forgetting that it is only 
bad presentiments that come true." 

" I am continually thinking of Weimar, which 
would be a pleasant retreat for me, if I can 
convince the people there that I have not come 
for them, but for their Library." 

" A charming letter from Madame Talma, and 
other Paris friends. I shall be delighted to see 
them again — but on condition that I stay with 
them as short a time as possible. 

" I feel such a physical necessity for peace and 
quietness, that if my present situation were to be 
prolonged, I should die of it, and might just as 
well hang myself at once. I feel that I must 
muster up the courage to conquer my winter for 
myself. And yet, in forming this project, I feel 
that I am hard-hearted and unjust. Why should 
I ruffle the affections of a woman who loves me so 
well, and deprive her of her last remaining friend 
at the moment when she has just lost her father ? " 

"Visited Genthoud. There is no better proof 
of the heavy burden of life than the spectacle of 
elderly persons trying to pass the time gaily. 
There is something so melancholy in this gaiety, 
and so painful in this resignation. And to think 
that the end of the boredom is death ! " 

" Dined with Madame Necker. Brilliant people 
are almost as tedious in their conversation as fools." 

" Passed the evening with my poor Am^lie, 
and played piquet with her. Really she is not 
so silly as they say, but I do not think she is as 
amiable as she tries to make me think. Still she 

170 



A Vain Struggle against Fate 

has a sort of gaiety and grace which, in spite of 
her ugliness, which is on the increase, rekindles my 
weak sentiment for her, as often as I look at her." 

"It is announced that the plague is spreading 
all over Italy. Madame de Stael cannot go there, 
and so I am obliged to remain here. One would 
say that exile, death, and the plague are in a 
conspiracy to keep me in chains. How could I 
desert Madame de Stael two years ago when she 
was banished ? Or seven months ago when she 
lost her father.-* How can I desert her now that 
she has given up her journey ? What am I to do 
against fate ? " 

**The reports of the plague in Italy were much 
exaggerated. Madame de Stael is carrying out 
her plans, and I, on my side, am going away too. 
How much time is lost in these continual prepara- 
tions for departure ! 

"Who would have believed that the good 
Adele de Sellon would have put on such im- 
pertinent airs since the marriage of her sister, 
whom she believes to be in high favour? Assuredly 
that is the last fault that I should have suspected in 
Adele. But I believe that all faults are latent 
in all women, waiting only for opportunity to 
develop them." 

''En route for Poligny." 

" Arrive at Brevens, where I find my father, a 
little aged, but in good health." 

" I set out again from D6le. A regular road to 
walk on — that is what my life requires." 

" I arrive at Lyons, where I rejoin Madame de 
Stael." 

171 



CHAPTER XV 

Madame de Stael's triumphs in Italy — She "gives performances 
in the character of woman of letters" — Her relations with 
Monti — Benjamin Constant in Paris — His relations with 
Madame Recamier, Madame Talma, and other friends. 

Benjamin Constant had left Coppet a few days 
before Madame de Stael, in order to visit his 
father, who had married his housekeeper and got 
his affairs embroiled. His son did his best to 
deliver him from the imbroglio, but the old man 
was barely grateful. He had become attached 
to his grievances through habit, and missed the 
sense of importance which he derived from them. 
Benjamin could only reflect that, at least, he had 
tried to do his duty. 

His meeting with Madame de Stael at Lyons 
was only for the purpose of saying good-bye. 
He stayed there a day or two, and spent 
an evening with the family of his rival, Camille 
Jordan. " Ridiculous provincials," was his verdict 
on them ; and he adds : " The party was amus- 
ing, thanks to the folly of the persons present." 
He meant to go on to Weimar. " Either I am 
a madman or else I shall be in Weimar in three 
weeks," he wrote ; but he went instead to his own 
estate at Herivaux, in Seine-et-Oise, whence he 

172 



Triumphal Progress in Itaiy 

visited Paris from time to time. " I have re- 
ceived," he notes, " a letter from Madame de Stael, 
who finds my letters melancholy, and inquires what 
I want to make me happy. Alas ! What I want 
is my freedom, and that is exactly what I am not 
allowed to have. I am reminded of the case of the 
hussar who took such an interest in the prisoner 
whom he had to put to death that he said to him : 
' Ask me any favour you like except your life.' " 

Madame de Stael, meanwhile, had crossed the 
Alps, and was conquering Italy in her fashion, 
as Napoleon had previously conquered it in his ; 
the Emperor doing nothing, on this occasion, to 
interfere with her triumph. Provided that she 
kept away from Paris, he was willing that, at a 
distance from Paris, she should be treated with 
consideration. He even said that, if she should 
be arrested in the kingdom of Naples, he would 
claim her as his subject, and march twenty thousand 
men to her rescue ; while she, on her part, was 
disposed to avoid giving unnecessary offence. 
The French Government was in Necker's debt 
for money advanced ; ^ and though the claim could 
be disputed on the ground that Necker's name 
had been on the list of emigres, whose property 
had passed to the State, there was a chance that 
Napoleon would settle it. As a matter of fact, 
the debt was not discharged until after the 
Bourbon Restoration ; but the hope of payment 

^ It was advanced in the reign of Louis XVI. — not to the King 
personally, but to the public Exchequer. 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

had, for the time being, a quieting effect upon 
Madame de Stael's demeanour. 

Her companions upon her journey were her 
children, Schlegel, and Sismondi. The last-named 
quitted her to visit Florence and the Comtesse 
d' Albany — Alfieri's widow, formerly the mis- 
tress of the Young Pretender, with whom he 
afterwards carried on a long and interesting 
correspondence. Schlegel remained with her 
throughout. We have met him already in the 
character of her children's preceptor ; but it is 
said that he also had higher pretensions, which 
Madame de Stael did not encourage, giving him 
only her friendship, whereas he aspired to her love. 
She distributed ^friendship as freely as charitable 
organisations distribute coals and blankets, so 
that there is nothing inherently improbable in 
the supposition — to which, indeed, Benjamin 
Constant's dislike of Schlegel may be deemed 
to give further support. His manners were rather 
bad than good. The stock story told against 
him is that he insisted on addressing Madame de 
Stael in public as chere amiCy in order to make it 
clear to the company that he was no ordinary 
pedagogue. Be that as it may, however, he was 
an exceptionally competent guide to the art 
treasures and ruins of Rome. 

How far Madame de Stael was susceptible to 
Italian influences — to what extent Italy conquered 
her — we shall have to consider presently when 
we speak of Corinne. The view of her friends 

174 



" A Woman of Letters " 

at the time was that she needed them badly, but 
was not likely to prove amenable. In matters 
of art, as in matters of metaphysics, she was more 
prone to gush than to understand ; and she her- 
self wrote that sculpture left her comparatively 
cold — that a beautiful thought meant more to her 
than the most beautiful piece of statuary. To 
those, moreover, who followed her course, it may 
well have seemed that there was too little recep- 
tivity in her attitude. She went through Italy 
as an actress struts upon the boards, losing no 
opportunity of taking the centre of the stage. 
" She is giving performances in the character of 
a woman of letters," is the way an Italian con- 
temporary, Chigi, puts it; and there must have 
been an appearance of reason for his belief that, 
whatever she seemed to see in Italy, the spectacle 
actually present to her mental vision was always 
Madame de Stael surrounded by other things. 

The great performance was before the Roman 
Arcadian Academy, where ten young men in 
succession discharged sonnets at her, "like the 
thunderbolts of the Vatican," and she herself 
recited a poem of her own composition. " All 
Rome," she writes, " with its Princes, Cardinals, 
etc., was present. I spare you a dozen sonnets 
in which I am made a new star." But Benjamin 
Constant, when the news of the triumph reached 
him, commented, in his Diary, thus : — 

"A letter from Madame de Stael. She is 

175 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

altogether enchanted with her success at Rome. 
Much good may it do her! She has written a 
sonnet on the death of Jesus Christ, and has read 
it at the Arcadian Academy. Of a truth there is 
somethinpf of the mountebank in this behaviour. 
If this sonnet reaches France, people will have 
a fresh reason for laughing at her. They will 
say she has been using religion as a means to 
gain her ends. How unfortunate is this ambition 
to win small successes which has already cost her 
so much trouble ! " 

The conquest of Italy included the conquest 
of the Italian poet, Vincenzo Monti. " Mamma," 
wrote the little Albertine de Stael, " cared for 
nothing in Italy except Monti and the sea ; " and it 
is true that she coupled Monti in eulogy with Mount 
Vesuvius, and addressed him as "- caro Monti" 
several times in the same letter, saying, "You 
were certainly a friend waiting for me, not a new 
acquaintance ; " and she invited him, of course, 
to visit her at Coppet. He was hardly worthy 
of the enthusiasm which she lavished on him, for 
he was a time-serving poet, always ready to sing 
for any master, whether Italian, French, br 
Austrian, who would give him a public appoint- 
ment ; and, in spite of reports that were circu- 
lated, there is no substantial reason for supposing 
that any relations other than enthusiastic were 
established. At all events, there is no hint to 
any such effect in Benjamin Constant's attitude ; 
and that fact seems conclusive. 

176 



The Diary a Faithful Mirror 

It was in the summer of 1805 that Madame de 
Stael returned to Coppet ; and the entries in 
Benjamin Constant's Diary during the interval 
show that, though she thrust herself from time 
to time into his thoughts, she did not by any 
means monopolise them. He was writing ; he 
was going into society ; he was interesting himself 
in other women — the Mrs. Lindsay whom he could 
not marry because, as he has told us, she had 
two illegitimate children, and the divorced wife of 
the actor Talma, also a lady of somewhat light 
reputation, seeing that she too had borne two 
natural children before her marriage, and had 
given birth to twins, whom she named Castor and 
Pollux, within a fortnight of the ceremony. But 
let the Journal speak. It continues to be the 
faithful mirror of a complex and distracted 
mind. 

" I was meaning to dine to-day with Allard. 
The desire for solitude overtook me, and I dined 
at home. And, indeed, what should I have done 
at this dinner ? I should have seen candles which 
would have pained my eyes, and people whom I 
do not care about ; and I should have said things 
which I should afterwards have been sorry for. 
I dined alone, I said nothing, and I screened the 
candles. It was much the better way." 

" A very nice letter from Madame de Stael. 

She is always in too great a hurry to put herself 

forward. Agitation and ambition ! She does 

not give the wings of fortune time to grow, but 

M 177 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

plucks them out feather by feather to make 
plumes for her hat." 

" How fatal is the society of women, owing to 
the difficulty of resisting them ! How egoistical 
they are without knowing it ! How they sacrifice 
everything to the fancy of the moment ! And to 
think that I cannot make any firm resolution be- 
cause of my profound sense of the brevity of life ! " 

** An absurd dinner at Madame D[utertre]'s. 
A husband beginning to be jealous, people who 
talked nothing but the gossip of their provincial 
towns, and myself timid in the midst of it all, as if 
it were evidence of inferiority to find oneself 
in the presence of the mediocre." 

"Called on Madame Dutertre. What a folly 
she committed, and what a hornet's nest she fell 
into, when she married a man of the emigration ! 
Indeed, what a company of convicts is this society 
of provincial tmigres, who left their country after 
fifteen or twenty years of a bad education in the 
houses of the squireens, their fathers, to complete 
that education on the banks of the Rhine, driven 
from village to village, acquiring nothing of the 
military life but its coarseness and licence, keep- 
ing themselves to themselves — keeping, that is to 
say, the worst company in the world. Now that 
they are back in France, they are more ignorant, 
more mad, more detestable than ever." 

" I try to rescue a fallen woman, but it is no 
good. There is a habit of degradation which 
nothing can efface. How things of that sort 
teach one to appreciate a pure marriage, in which 

i;8 



Necker's Posthumous Works 

pleasure is not followed by disgust, duty and enjoy- 
ment go hand in hand, and she whose embrace 
one quits becomes one's friend, the companion 
of one's life, and the partner of one's thoughts 
and interests." 

** The Journal de Paris has attacked the 
posthumous works [of Necker] just published by 
Madame de Stael. The article is by Carrion 
Nisas, an infamous buffoon. I set to work to 
reply to him in a few words. Thus : * It is not 
given to all the world to accomplish with impunity 
the most sacred and natural of all duties. In all 
ages a certain class of the populace has bawled 
to disturb funeral processions. 

" ' The daughter of M. Necker might have 
expected it. She remains to-day the sole repre- 
sentative of a family that was long illustrious. 
This family must pay the price of its glory to the 
depredators of all glory, the enemies of all virtue. 
Besides, the opportunity is a good one. The 
father is dead; the daughter is far away. Put 
forth all your strength, then ; the enterprise is 
worthy of your courage. It becomes you to 
attack a tomb defended by a woman.' " 

" Called upon Madame Pourrat. She spoke 
to me of Madame de Stael's book on M. Necker, 
which is doing better than I expected. ' How,' 
Madame Pourrat said to me, ' could M. Necker 
be afraid of death ? He should have said to 
himself: " Either the soul is immortal or it is not. 
If it is, I have nothing to fear ; if it is not, then 
too I have nothing to fear." ' As if the imagina- 
tion ever presented these dilemmas! It is as if I 

i;9 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

were to say to a lover : ' Either your mistress is 
faithful to you or she is not. If she is, she is 
worthy of you, and you need not distrust her ; if 
she is not, she is unworthy of you, and you need 
not regret her.' " 

"A tiresome dinner with Madame Pourrat." 

" Dine with Madame Recamier, and meet 
General Sebastiani, A silly man, cold-blooded, 
full of those generalisations which the Machiavel- 
lists of our day adopt as profound truths." 

" This morning I sorted my papers — a task 
which always makes me profoundly melancholy. 
What a number of ties I have broken ! 

" What a strange passion for independence and 
isolation has dominated my life, and through 
what weakness, stranger still, I find myself at the 
present time the most dependent man I know ! I 
must follow to the end this life which I have led 
so madly. I have at least had the wit to keep 
it serious and intact in the eyes of others. No 
one suspects the madness which invades and 
devastates it. A letter from Madame de Stael. 
I shall not answer. I am sick to death of 
her eternal reproaches and my eternal justifica- 
tions. It is all very well for women to talk. 
When once there has been love in one's relations 
with them, they will not be satisfied with anything 
else. " 

" Madame Talma gets worse and worse. The 
doctors are divided in opinion. Their skill is 
inadequate, and nature is inexorable. . . . All my 
friends are dying, and I do not remember to have 

1 80 



Madame Talma Dying 

seen the death of a single enemy. A year ago, 
In this same Journal, I was congratulating myself 
upon saving Huber at Ulm. He is dead. I 
wrote that there had been nothing but pleasure in 
my relations with Madame Talma ; she is dying. 
I have often praised the gentleness, the social 
qualities of Blacon ; he has committed suicide. 
My path is over graves. ... I remain — ddbris 
in the midst of fallen ruins — my soul withered and 
worn out. I regret to note that all that is good 
perishes, and that all that is vile and savage 
endures." 

" Madame Talma is dying ; nothing more can 
be done for her. Her pretended friends are 
around her, making a fuss, looking out for what 
they can get. Their melancholy calculations are 
disguised as a confident hope of her recovery. H er 
character is almost entirely changed by her illness. 
She is restless, exacting, greedy — she who used to 
be so generotis ! Poor human nature ! " 

" Dinner at Madame Lindsay's with a few 
friends. The evening was agreeable and the 
conversation pleasant ; but my life is not there. 
In truth my life is not anywhere but within, I 
let it be taken hold of. Anyone is free to take 
possession of my outward life who can. It is 
wrong ; for that deprives me of my time and 
strength. But the inner life is defended by a 
barrier which other people do not cross. They 
cause pain to enter there sometimes, but never do 
they establish themselves there as masters," 

*' Pass the evening at Madame R^camier's, I 
i8i 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

must have made myself amiable, for I was compli- 
mented on doing so." 

" Dinner with Madame Talma. She is much 
better, and seems to have reconquered life by the 
power of her mind. That would prove the truth 
of the saying that it is only through stupidity that 
one dies." 

" Supper with Madame Rdcamier. It was 
very tiresome. The young people of this 
generation are too much given to sneering, and 
are veritably stupid." 

" Dined with Hochet and Piscatory. What 
with the dinner and the conversation, I became 
excited and said things about people which I have 
hitherto been careful not to say. Happily my 
companions will forget half of what I said and 
only repeat a portion of the rest. 

" I propose to interrupt all my literary work in 
order to set my life in order. Many people have 
needed less than a month to seize power in the 
State. Ouorht I to need more in order to decide 
matters which concern myself alone ? I will put 
all my strength into the task. But, above all, 
there must be no more Coppet, and no more 
Geneva. All that I find there is a glittering 
lake which has made me blind, and relatives who 
never cease finding fault with me. 

" Madame Lindsay writes to me to say that, at 
bottom, we are very much like each other. That 
perhaps is a reason why we should not suit each 
other. It is because men are so much alike that 
Providence has created women who do not 
resemble them." 

182 



The Soul an Inexplicable Enigma 

" Dined with Madame Talma, who is dying, but 
is more amiable than ever." 

" Passed the day and the night near Madame 
Talma, whose end is approaching. I look on and 
study death. She has recovered all her faculties — 
her wit, her grace, her gaiety, her memory, the 
old vivacity of her opinions. Can it be that all 
that will perish } One clearly sees that what she 
has preserved of her soul is only troubled by the 
weakness of her body, but not intrinsically 
diminished. It is certain that, if one could take 
that which makes her think and speak — her mind, 
in a word — and all the faculties which make up 
that which I have loved so well, and transport 
it to another body, it would all live again. 
Nothing is impaired. . . . The spectacle of death 
on this occasion brings me ideas to which I was 
not prone." 

" She is dead. It is over, for ever ! Kind and 
gentle friend ! I saw you die. Long time I held 
you in my arms. And now you are no more. 
My grief had been kept in suspense by the hope 
of saving you yet again. I saw your death 
without terror, for I saw nothing violent enough 
to destroy this intelligence of which I guard so 
lively a recollection. Immortality of the soul I 
Inexplicable enigma! . . . 

" To read what I have written in the past 
about this distinguished woman, no one would 
believe in the bitter regret and the unceasing pain 
which her loss has made me feel. Yes, I judge 
my friends severely, but I love them better than 
anything else in the world. I serve them, and I 

. 183 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

render them more true affection than do all those 
people who boast of their sensibility, but who, I 
am sure, are not such good companions in grief 
and adversity as I am. I have lost the most 
disinterested and the best of friends." 

" I was present at the burial of Madame Talma, 
with a small number of friends who were deeply 
affected. For a moment I feared that I should 
not be able to bear up through this mournful 
ceremony, which seemed doubly sad when I 
recalled the grace, the gaiety, and the kindness of 
heart of her who was locked up in the narrow 
coffin. The ceremony alone was an empty show, 
wherein each played his part, the priests singing 
their psalms for money, and everything proceeding 
mechanically. A queer state of things, when 
even those who claim to represent religion, those 
who call themselves its ministers, do not take the 
trouble to appear convinced of its truth. Only 
one portion of the ceremony seemed to me to 
have anything touching in it — the salutation of 
the priests as they pass before the body, and the 
blessing, as it were, of the coffin by each one of 
those present. The repetition of this salutation is 
a sign of memory and farewell which left me with 
an agreeable emotion. I felt grateful to the men 
who thus continued to show their respect to her 
who was no more." 



184 



CHAPTER XVI 

Corinne 

Madame de Stael returned to Coppet and wrote 
Corinne, which was published in the spring 
of 1807. 

It is the most famous of her books. Six 
editions of it were printed in her lifetime, and 
others have been printed since. Those of her 
contemporaries who found fault with it did so 
chiefly because she glorified an Englishman at 
the expense of a Frenchman, and spoke dis- 
dainfully of the Italians. Most of them were 
enthusiastic ; and it would be possible, if it were 
worth while, to fill many pages with the ex- 
pressions of their praise. Byron, Benjamin 
Constant, Suard, Henri Meister, Sir James 
Mackintosh, Frederick Schlegel, Gouverneur 
Morris were numbered among her panegyrists. 
It is only because the verdict was so nearly 
unanimous that it is unnecessary to call the 
witnesses. The world in general bestowed the 
name of the heroine upon the author. Thence- 
forward, when people said "Corinne," they meant 
Madame de Stael. The modern critic, even if he 
does not endorse the judgment, must at least 
begin by recording it. 

185 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Such a critic's first impression is that here, at 
last, is something definite and mature. When 
Madame de Stael began to write, she could not 
even punctuate ; the stops are all over her pages, 
as if sprinkled at random from a pepper-pot. In 
Corinne they are used, as they should be, to give 
form to the sentences. And, as the sentences are 
complete, so too is the book. There is no longer 
any question of brilliant promise or noble failure 
to achieve. We may like the book, or we may 
dislike it ; but we can make no mistake about 
it, and can have no doubts as to the writer's 
intentions. For good or for bad, it is exactly 
what it was meant to be. It is, in fact, and was 
meant to be, two things — a dissertation on Italy, 
and a romance into which Madame de Stael, as 
usual, put a great deal of herself. 

"If it were not out of respect for my fellow- 
creatures," Madame de Stael said to Mol^, " I 
would not take the trouble to open my window to 
get my first view of the Bay of Naples, whereas I 
would willingly travel five hundred leagues to 
converse with a man of talent unknown to me." 
We have already quoted her assertion that she pre- 
ferred beautiful thoughts to beautiful statuary. The 
two statements put together complete Madame 
de Stael's confession of her incompetence to 
interpret a country which appeals far more to the 
senses than to the intellect. Just as the real 
intellectual problems, as presented, for instance, 
in the Critique of Pure Reason, were too high for 

1 86 



Italy Through Schlegel's Eyes 

her, so the art of Italy was outside her range. 
She was clever, but not profound ; prone to 
emotion, but not susceptible to the charms of 
form and'^ colour ; incapable, above all things, of 
becoming as a little child in the presence of things 
which she did not understand. " I understand 
everything that is comprehensible, and whatever 
I do not understand is of no importance," would 
seem to have been her motto in Italy as in 
Germany. We find her writing, therefore, like 
an art lecturer who has never been an art student 
— but with one significant qualification : she had 
Schlegel at her elbow. 

What Madame de Stael saw with her own 
eyes in Italy was the levity of the Italians, who 
made love without abandoning themselves to 
passion, and had no talent for politics. About 
that she wrote despairing letters to Monti. The 
rest was seen, in the first instance, if not in the 
last resort, through Schlegel's eyes. As we read 
the book, we picture Schlegel peeping over the 
writer's shoulder and proposing instructive inter- 
polations. More than half of the first volume, at 
any rate, consists of such interpolations, though 
they do not appear exactly in the shape which 
Schlegel would have given them. Occasionally 
there is a flash of inspiration that obviously was 
not Schlegel's. The description of the Roman 
Campagna as " a tired soil which seems too proud 
to be fertile " is a case in point — a characteristic 
use of the pathetic fallacy. More often the 

187 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

generalisations acquire a vagueness of which 
Schlegel would not have been proud ; and there 
is a vast deal too much enthusiasm for the beaux 
arts in general, paraded on page after page as 
the badg-e of the d^ne sensible. It is self-con- 
scious and patronising, and the true ring is not in it. 
Italy contributes the local colour, but not the spirit 
or the atmosphere of the story. Indeed, the 
English local colour is better and more convincing 
than the Italian ; Madame de Stael having known 
England in earlier and more impressionable years. 
The story, as all the world knows, is of the 
vain endeavour of a woman of genius to find 
happiness in love. Its interest and value is as 
Madame de Stael's own rendering of what she 
conceived to be her own experience of life. 
Here again, as in Delphine, there is little that is 
strictly speaking autobiographical. The story, 
indeed, so far from being autobiographical, is 
hardly even original. The plot is taken from 
Madame de Charriere — the same Madame de 
Charriere from whom Madame de Stael had 
already taken Benjamin Constant. In Caliste, 
which Madame de Stael had read, as she says, 
"■ ten times," there is the same English nobleman 
who, for sufficient reasons, cannot marry the 
foreign woman whom he loves. What is new is 
not the plot but the motive — a woman's genius 
despised and rejected, domesticated mediocrity 
triumphant, the man sorry for his refusal of the 
pearl that was beyond all price. 



The Super-Man and Super- Woman 

It would not seem that the lover is drawn from 
Benjamin Constant, or from M. de Narbonne, 
or from Camille Jordan, or from any man whom 
Madame de Stael had known. He is a woman's 
ideal man, somewhat suggesting — or should one not 
say anticipating? — by his mysterious melancholy 
and his amazing prowess, those lovelorn Life 
Guardsmen of " Ouida's " fiction who suffer un- 
told agonies in perfumed boudoirs, sit up all night 
drinking brandy punch with boon companions, 
and win the Grand National or stroke the Oxford 
Eight to victory upon the morrow. The way in 
which Lord Nelvil takes the helm and encourages 
the timid sailors during the storm in the Channel, 
and the way in which he runs about with a squirt, 
extinguishing the conflagration at Ancona — to 
say nothing of the way in which he plunges into 
the Bay of Naples to rescue a drowning man — 
are equally characteristic of the Super-man as con- 
ceived by woman in the days when she did not 
yet esteem hers the stronger sex. But Corinne is 
not only the Super-woman. She is also Madame 
de Stael. 

We are told, it is true, that Corinne was 
beautiful, and we know that Madame de Stael 
was not ; but that discrepancy proves nothing, 
and is not intended to deceive. Or, at any rate, 
it proves, not that Madame de Stael fancied that 
she was beautiful, but only that she would have 
liked to fancy it. In other respects the likeness 
is a speaking one. The crowning of Corinne 

189 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

with laurel on the Capitol was, as we have seen, 
an incident in Madame de Stael 's own Italian 
journey. She had been clothed for the occasion 
exactly as she clothes Corinne ; she had ex- 
changed sonnets with her admirers in exactly 
the same way. She gives Corinne those shapely 
arms which were the chief of her own physical 
attractions. Corinne's talents were her own 
talents ; Corinne's unhappiness was her own un- 
happiness. In her portrait of Corinne she depicted 
feminine genius as she understood it. The limita- 
tions of the conception are the more pathetic 
because they are so absolutely and obviously 
unconscious. 

Genius is indefinable. One hesitates, there- 
fore, before saying that Madame de Stael neither 
had the divine gift nor succeeded in depicting it 
in her heroine. Yet one can find in the figure of 
Corinne a good deal that seems to warrant Thiers' 
pronouncement that her creator was the very type 
of mediocrity. Thiers was a man who knew 
mediocrity well from personal experience, and his 
remarks on that branch of the subject necessarily 
command respect. It was, no doubt, highly 
gifted mediocrity that he recognised in Madame 
de Stael ; and it might plausibly be argued that, 
when mediocrity is highly gifted, it ceases to be 
mediocre. By tirelessness, by restlessness — by 
great, though scattered, energy — Madame de 
Stael rose far above the common level of women, 
imposed her personality, and left her mark. 

190 



The Salonidre of the Bine Arts 

And yet, admitting all this, one can see what 
Thiers meant by his criticism — and can see, 
too, that there was something in it. One sees 
it best by first seeing, as one can from the 
persual of Corinne, what Madame de Stael under- 
stood by genius, and how she expected it to be 
manifested. 

What one misses in the alleged genius of Corinne 
is "inwardness"; what one notes is obviousness. 
The end at which this genius always aims is 
effect ; the test by which it is pronounced supreme 
is always that of effect — in the actor's sense of the 
word. One does not think of Corinne producing 
beautiful things by stealth because the love of 
beauty constrains her. Like Madame de Stael 
herself, she gives performances ; and her claim 
on our admiration is not the quality of the work, 
but the success of the performance. She is as it 
were the saloniere of th^ fine arts. She talks 
interminably, and the men sit at her feet and 
hang upon her words. She " improvises," and 
the men clap their hands and place the crown 
upon her head. We are left with the impression 
that this sort of thing is not only the proof but 
the purpose of genius, and that genius, whether 
in the person of Corinne or of Madame de Stael, 
is wronged when happiness in love does not result 
from such exhibitions of what vulgar people have 
been known to call "parlour tricks." 

Yet the real reason why happiness in love is 
not so brought about is quite clear, though quite 

191 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

other than Madame de Stael supposed. It is not 
the splendour of the genius, but the obviousness 
of it, that is the obstacle. The history of Madame 
de Stael's own love affairs is generally this : that 
she won men's affections because she talked so 
well, and then lost them because she talked 
so much. The level-headed observer would have 
expected pretty much the same thing to happen 
with Corinne. The first effect would have been 
dazzling because — once more to quote the vulgar 
— Corinne " kept all her goods in the shop 
window." But, if there is to be happiness in 
love, the first effect must be only the piquant 
prelude to the second, and the second to the 
third. The lover must be permitted to feel that 
he is also a discoverer — that the pearl of great 
price which he has found has a secret value 
of which he only is aware. He may, indeed, 
scramble and compete for the pearl of which the 
marvellous value is made publicly known to the 
world ; but in that case it is vanity, not love, 
that lures him on. And happiness in vanity is a 
very vain sort of happiness, and differs toto ccelo 
from happiness in love. 

In considerations of this sort, and not, as 
Madame de Stael supposed, in the dislike of 
mediocrity for anything better than itself, lies the 
secret of Corinne's failure. Much satire is ex- 
pended, in the course of the story, upon the 
narrow vision and gross prejudices of the 
commonplace. It is effective satire, and it is 

193 



"Corinne's" Genius Superficial 

well merited ; but it is largely beside the mark. 
Real genius triumphs over such things by 
ignoring them. Corinne's was the superficial 
genius of the popular entertainer. Her volubility 
dissipated the mysteries through which it is the 
delight of love slowly to find its way. When she 
had recited her poems and lectured on the arts, she 
had revealed all the secrets of her charm. She 
was tout en dehors — as obvious as the photograph 
of a professional beauty or the pictorial advertise- 
ment of a tooth-paste. The pathetic thing is that 
Madame de Stael should have drawn such a figure 
as a glorified portrait of herself, not perceiving the 
limitations which its externality implied, but in 
the confident belief that this sort of thing is 
genius in its loftiest manifestation, and that those 
who do not love it when they see it, and desire 
its daily companionship, are citizens of Philistia, 
the enemies of light and " sensibility." The reason 
of her own loud, long, and unavailing cry for 
happiness is there. 



N 193 



CHAPTER XVII 

The return from Italy — The life at Coppet — The visitors — Their 
reminiscences — Descriptions of Coppet by Madame Vigee Le 
Brun — By Baron de Voght — By Rosalie de Constant — 
Quarrels with Benjamin Constant. 

Madame de Stael was no sooner back from 
Italy than she wished to go to France ; but 
Fouchd refused her a passport. She therefore 
divided her time for some months between 
Coppet and Geneva, arranging a notable series of 
theatrical representations in both places. Even 
after she had obtained her passport, she delayed 
her departure until the spring of 1806, when she 
took up her residence at Auxerre. Schlegel was 
with her. Mathieu de Montmorency, Camille 
Jordan, and other friends visited her there ; but 
she was, none the less, unhappy. Benjamin's 
conduct, as we shall see presently, was once more 
such as to cause her distress ; and we gather from 
one of her letters to Frederika Brun^ that she 
could not sleep without the use of opiates. 

From Auxerre she visited Blois, and she also 
planned a visit to Spa for the benefit of her 
health. Her next sojourn was at Rouen, where, 
early in 1807, she received permission to reside, 

^ The poetess of Copenhagen. Her correspondence with Bon- 
stetten has been published. 



Once again at Coppet 

until the following ist of April, at the Chateau 
d'Acosta, in Auberge-en-Ville, Seine-et-Oise. 
She went there ; she even succeeded, while 
there, in paying surreptitious visits to Paris, but 
the circumstance came to Napoleon's ears, and 
she was ordered to withdraw at once to a greater 
distance from the capital. In May, therefore, she 
returned once more to Coppet, where she enter- 
tained her friends, and made her preparations for 
yet another journey to Germany. On Decem- 
ber 3, 1807, she announced her departure to the 
Prefect, alleging her desire that her younger son, 
Albert, should be instructed in the German 
language. Attended by Schlegel, she arrived, 
on the 14th, at Munich, where she made the 
acquaintance of Schelling, who had married 
Schlegel's divorced wife. After a short stay, she 
moved on to Vienna, where the Imperial family 
received her with civility, and where, in April, 
Albert de Stael became a pupil at the Military 
Academy. In June 1808 she travelled to Weimar 
and Frankfort, and in July of the same year we 
find her once again at Coppet. 

Such is, in brief outline, the chronicle of the 
exterior events of Madame de Stael's life during 
the period in which the inner life of the heart 
approached, and reached, and passed its crisis. 
Napoleon's persecution of her did not amount, as 
yet, to much more than a policy of pin-pricks ; 
and he explained his attitude clearly enough to 
her son, Auguste, in an interview accorded to him 

195 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

at Chambdry. **Your mother," he said, ** would 
not be six months at Paris before I should be 
obliged to lock her up at Bicetre or the Temple, 
and that is a thing I should be sorry to do, as it 
would make a stir, and damage me in public 
opinion." If he had imprisoned her, he added, 
he would relent, and release her, but he would not 
recall her from exile. She might go to Rome, to 
Naples, to Vienna, to Berlin, to Milan, to Lyons. 
If she wanted to write libels about him, she had 
better go to London. All the rest of Europe was 
open to her ; but to Paris she would not be 
allowed to come. There, and in that neighbour- 
hood, no one might live who disliked the Emperor 
and made jokes at his expense. 

Hence the unceremonious expulsion from 
Seine-et-Oise ; hence also the fact that the 
indignity there endured interfered in no respect 
with the dignity and outward splendour of the 
salon at Coppet. One could fill a page with the 
names of distinguished personages who, at one 
time or another, were guests there. Benjamin 
Constant, Schlegel, and Sismondi were habitues. 
Other names upon our list would be those of 
Madame R^camier, Prospere de Barante,^ Werner, 
the German poet, Karl Ritter, the German geo- 
grapher, Baron de Voght,^ the Duchess of 
Courland, Monti, Pictet, editor of the Biblio- 

1 Son of the Prefect of Geneva, afterwards in the diplomatic service. 

2 Philanthropist, economist, and vi^riter on agricultural subjects. 
The Emperor of Austria gave him his title. 

196 



An Impressionist Picture 

theque, Madame Vigee Le Brun, Oelenschlager, 
the Danish poet, Cuvier, Bonstetten, Frederika 
Brun, and Benjamin Constant's cousin, RosaHe. 
An impressionist picture has been bequeathed to 
us from the pen of almost every one of them, and 
there would be little to be gained by troubling to 
arrange the pictures in their order, or selecting them 
otherwise than at random. The picture drawn by 
Madame Vigee Le Brun may serve to begin with. 

" I paint her in antique costume. She is not 
beautiful, but the animation of her countenance 
takes the place of beauty. To aid the expression 
I wished to give her, I entreated her to recite tragic 
verses while I painted. She declaimed passages 
from Corneille and Racine. ... I find many 
persons established at Coppet : the beautiful 
Madame Recamier, the Comte de Sabran,^ a 
young Englishman, Benjamin Constant, etc. Its 
society is continually renewed. They come to 
visit the illustrious exile who is pursued by the 
rancour of the Emperor. Her two sons are now 
with her, under the instruction of the German 
scholar Schlegel ; her daughter is very beautiful, 
and has a passionate love of study. Madame de 
Stael receives with grace and without affectation ; 
she leaves her company free all the morning, but 
they unite in the evening. It is only after dinner 
that they can converse with her. She then walks in 
her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch ; 
and her words have an ardour quite peculiar to her. 
It is impossible to interrupt her. At these times 
she produces on one the effect of an improvisatrice." 
^ Elzear de Sabran, stepson of Madame de Boufflers. 
197 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Next we may quote the report of the Genevan 
writer, Petit-Senn, who apparently was not quite 
sure whether he ought to be shocked or not. 
The circle, according to him — 

" Presented the aspect of a synod of quite 
novel character. The different systems of religion 
were strongly contrasted there. Catholicism 
was represented by Mathieu de Montmorency, 
Quietism by M. de Langallerie, Illuminism by 
M. de Divonne, Rationalism by Baron Voght, 
Calvinism by the Pastor Maulinie. Even 
Benjamin Constant, then occupied with his 
work on Religions, brought his tribute to the theo- 
logical conferences — conferences which borrowed 
no austerity from the accidents of the time or the 
place. The conversations at dinner and in the 
evening were chiefly on religious subjects of the 
most mystic nature, and were seldom changed 
even for the news of the day or for brief musical 
entertainments." 

Our third picture may be that drawn by Baron 
de Voght, above referred to, in a letter to 
Madame Recamier. 

"It is to you that I owe my most amiable 
reception at Coppet. It is no doubt to the 
favourable expectations aroused by your friend- 
ship that I owe my intimate acquaintance with 
this remarkable woman. I might have met her 
without your assistance, — some casual acquaintance 
would no doubt have introduced me, — but I should 
never have penetrated to the intimacy of this 
sublime and beautiful soul, and should never 
have known how much better she is than her 

198 



Another Picture 

reputation. She is an angel sent from heaven to 
reveal the divine goodness upon earth. To make 
her irresistible, a pure ray of celestial light 
embellishes her spirit and makes her amiable 
from every point of view. 

" At once profound and light, whether she is 
discovering a mysterious secret of the soul or 
grasping the lightest shadow of a sentiment, her 
genius shines without dazzling, and when the 
orb of light has disappeared, it leaves a pleasant 
twilight to follow it. ... No doubt a few faults, 
a few weaknesses, occasionally veil this celestial 
apparition ; even the initiated must sometimes be 
troubled by these eclipses which the Genevan 
astronomers in vain endeavour to predict. 

** My travels so far have been limited to 
Lausanne and Coppet, where I often stay three 
or four days. The life there suits me perfectly ; 
the company is even more to my taste. I like 
Constant's wit, Schlegel's learning, Sabran's 
amiability, Sismondi's talent and character, the 
simple truthful disposition and just intellectual 
perceptions of Auguste, the wit and sweetness 
of Albertine — I was forgetting Bonstetten — an 
excellent fellow, full of knowledge of all sorts, 
ready in wit, adaptable in character — in every 
way inspiring one's respect and confidence. 

" Your sublime friend looks on and gives life 
to everything. She imparts intelligence to those 
around her. In every corner of the house some- 
one is engaged in composing a great work. . . . 
Corinne is writing her delightful letters about 
Germany, which will no doubt prove to be the 
best thing she has ever done. 

" The Shunammitish Widow, an Oriental 
199 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

melodrama which she has just finished, will be 
played in October. Coppet will be flooded with 
tears. Constant and Auguste are both composing 
tragedies ; Sabran is writing a comic opera, and 
Sismondi a history ; Schlegel is translating some- 
thing, Bonstetten is busy with philosophy, and 
I am busy with my letter to Juliette." 

A month later, Baron de Voght resumes : — 

" Since my last letter, Madame de Stael has 
read us several chapters of her work. Every- 
where it bears the marks of her talent. I wish 
I could persuade her to cut out everything in it 
connected with politics, and all the metaphors 
which interfere with its clarity, simplicity, and 
accuracy. What she needs to demonstrate is not 
her Republicanism but her wisdom. . . . Mile 
de Jenner played in one of Werner's tragedies 
which was given last Friday before an audience 
of twenty. She, Werner, and Schlegel played 
perfectly. . . . 

" The arrival in Switzerland of M. Cuvier has 
been a happy distraction for Madame de Stael ; 
they spent two days together at Geneva, and were 
well pleased with each other. On her return to 
Coppet she found Middleton there, and in receiv- 
ing his confidences forgot her troubles. Yesterday 
she resumed her work. 

"The poet^ whose mystical and sombre genius 
has caused us such profound emotions, starts, in a 
few days' time, for Italy, 

" I accompanied Corinne to Massot's. To 
alleviate the tedium of the sitting, a musical 

1 Monti. 
200 



Further Reminiscences 

performance had been arranged, a Mile Romilly 
playing pleasantly on the harp, and the studio 
was a veritable temple of the Muses. . . . 

" Bonstetten gave us two readings of a Memoir 
on the Northern Alps. It began very well, but 
afterwards it bored us. . . . Madame de Stael 
resumed her reading, and there was no longer 
any question of being bored. It is marvellous 
how much she must have read and thought over 
to be able to find the opportunity of saying so 
many good things. One may disagree with her, 
but one cannot help delighting in her talent. . . . 

"And now we are here at Geneva, trying to 
reproduce Coppet at the Hotel des Balances. 
I am delightfully situated, with a wide view over 
the valley of Savoy, between the Alps and the 
Jura. . . . Yesterday evening the illusion of 
Coppet was complete. I had been with Madame 
de Stael, to call on Madame Rilliet,^ who is so 
charming at her own fireside. On my return 
I played chess with Sismondi. Madame de 
Stael, Mile Randall,^ and Mile Jenner sat on the 
sofa chatting with Bonstetten and young Barante. 
We were as we had always been — as we were 
in the days that I shall never cease regretting." 

In conclusion we may survey the scene through 
the eyes of Cousin Rosalie — eyes that, as we 
know, were sharply observant, though prejudiced, 
and prone to see faults. Our first letter is 
written not long after Necker's death. 

^ Nee Huber, the companion of Madame de Stael in her girlhood. 
2 An English lady, a protegee of Madame de Stael, and, after 
her death, of the Duchesse de Broglie. 

20I 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" The other day I saw Bonstetten, who told 
me about Madame de Stael and her sorrow. 
She displays it at Geneva, and utilises it to 
give entertainments to the Duchess of Courland. 
Coppet, all the summer, has been the rendezvous 
of the savants of Germany and Geneva. There 
have been prodigious outbursts of wit and learning. 
Never, said M. de Bonstetten, has there been 
such an outpouring of ideas. He assured me 
that it might have tired anyone to death, and that 
it was a pleasure thereafter to meet people whose 
conversation was commonplace." 

About the same time M. Constant d'Arlens 
visited Coppet, and Rosalie reports the gossip 
that he brought home with him. 

" Schlegel used to address the lady of the 
house with irony or severity ; Benjamin was ill, 
and grumbled all day long, like a spoiled child. 
Moreover, he shows himself shockingly fond of 
little Albertine. He and her mother combine to 
overwhelm her with caresses and misguided 
attentions." 

Finally we may give Rosalie's account of a 
performance of Merope at which she was herself 
present. 

" I had a kind and friendly reception. The 
performance fulfilled all my expectations. I had 
never seen this beautiful tragedy played. The 
simplicity of the subject and of the action, the 
unaccentuated elevation of the sentiments, the 
sustained beauty of the lines, the verisimilitude of 
the events represented — all these things contribute 

202 



The Coppet Salon 

to one's interest and illusion. I was at Messena, 
and Madame de Stael was indeed the august and 
unhappy queen. She had recovered the dignity 
and grace which she ordinarily lacks. The tone 
of her voice and the expression of her face suited 
her part. She never for an instant ceased to 
realise her role. M. Cramer also gave me great 
pleasure as Narbas. The other actors were, in 
my opinion, mediocre or bad ; but the general 
effect was such that one forgave them. The 
spectacle as a whole was agreeable and well 
arranged, and the spectators were well placed 
for seeing and hearing. One feels obliged .to the 
celebrated lady for having taken up this noble 
kind of entertainment. Conversation gains from 
it. People are, to some extent, fishing for invita- 
tions. It is a pity that she does not maintain in 
her house the tone which would make women 
anxious to go there. They have a long repertory, 
and are going to play Mahomet. Benjamin 
thinks he is going to play very well, but for 
my part I shall feel very anxious about his 
debut." 

Such is our setting. The Coppet Salon which 
our quotations conjure up must have been, as has 
been said, "something like Holland House but 
more Bohemian, something like Harley Street 
but more select, something like Gad's Hill — 
which it resembled in the fact that the members 
of the house parties were expected to spend their 
mornings at their desks — but on a higher social 
plane ; a centre at once of high thinking and 
frivolous behaviour, of hard work and desperate 

203 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

love-making, which sometimes paved the way for 
trouble." 

One visualises the scene easily as one stands in 
the large Coppet drawing-room, in which so many 
ornaments, so many pictures, so many articles of 
furniture are relics of the celebrated epoch. One 
thinks at first only of the outward glitter and the 
intellectual distinction ; and one is tempted to say 
that here life was lived as it should be lived — as 
all persons of intelligence and leisure and reason- 
able contempt for the conventions would like to 
live. Not until one's thoughts penetrate beneath 
the surface do the doubts arise ; but then they 
come in great force, and slowly strengthen into 
certainties. 

For this society was in the main a society of 
exiles — of uprooted men and women, whose lives, 
by no fault of their own, lacked aim and continu- 
ity. Only a few of them were really happy and 
contented — those who were placid and passionless 
like Madame Recamier, and those who, like 
Sismondi, were absorbed in their intellectual 
occupations. The rest were only making believe 
furiously, and trying to persuade themselves that 
movement was the same thing as life. Madame 
de Stael, whose movements were the most agitated, 
was probably the farthest from true happiness. 
She wrote of Coppet as " the place where I bored 
myself so terribly for so many years." 

Only boredom was far from being her only, or 
even her worst distress. One cannot fail to be 

204 



Stormy Scenes 

reminded of that at the moment when the liveried 
attendant of the visitors exhibits the miniature of 
Benjamin Constant — "homme de lettres qui visitait 
le chateau de temps en temps." One remembers 
then that the period of Madame de Stael's 
triumphant theatrical representations — the period 
of the house parties that were famous throughout 
Europe — was also the period of the stormy 
passages which culminated in her final severance 
from her lover. 

The visitors whom she entertained knew little 
or nothing about that. Sainte-Beuve, indeed, 
relates how one of them, concealed behind some 
bushes in the garden, inadvertently overheard a 
quarrel in which tears were mingled with 
reproaches and recriminations. He seems, how- 
ever, to have kept his own counsel at the time ; 
and before strangers appearances must have 
been in the main preserved. At all events, it is 
not to the memoirs of contemporaries that we 
have to go for the details of the story. For these 
we must go back to the Constant correspondence 
and the Journal Intime. 



205 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Theatrical performances at Coppet — Extracts from the Journal 
Intime — Benjamin Constant renews his acquaintance with 
Charlotte Dutertre — He proposes marriage and is accepted — 
Madame de Stael pursues him and drags him back to Coppet. 

In 1805, Madame de Stael told persons in her 
confidence that she meant to marry Benjamin 
Constant later, when she had started her sons in 
their professions ; but his letters to his family at 
this period show no disposition to fall in with her 
proposals. The deaths of Madame Talma and of 
Madame de Charriere appear, for the time being, 
to have expelled all thoughts of other women from 
his mind. In the former, he writes, he has lost 
" the person whom I trusted the most, and who 
had the most disinterested affection for me — a 
woman, in short, who often gave me pleasure, 
and never caused me pain." He had intended 
to visit the latter on her deathbed ; " but her 
extreme weakness rendered all emotion danger- 
ous, and I feared to make her worse, and so 
precipitate the hour which I was told was in- 
evitable." There follow melancholy reflections on 
death and the links which it severs : " None of 
these losses are replaced. The time for forming 
new ties is over ; the world is depopulated ; and 

206 



The Plot Thickens 

though I am not yet old, I have more friends in 
the grave than on the earth." For the rest, the 
letters deal with politics and money matters. 
The bankruptcy of Madame Rdcamier's husband 
is mentioned. The request is made that the 
writer's letters may not be addressed to the "care 
of" Madame de Stael, since he is not her guest, 
though he is occupying a separate apartment in 
the house in which she is staying at Geneva ; but 
that is the only occurrence of her name. 

Of the Diary for 1 805 only a few fragments have 
been preserved. The principal fact that transpires 
is that Benjamin's friends are still trying to find 
a wife for him. ** It is evident," he writes, " that 
it is open to me to marry either Antoinette or 
Adrienne, and that, if I do not do so, I am renounc- 
ing with a light heart an income of thirty thousand 
francs." But he does renounce that income. " It 
would be the best plan, so far as my work is con- 
cerned, but Madame de Stael has resumed 
possession of me." It is not until 1806 that the 
plot, as related in the Diary, thickens. 

The entries have evidently been printed in 
the wrong order, and it is impossible to be sure 
of reprinting them in the right order ; but it 
seems probable that the passages relating to the 
theatrical performances ought to come first. At 
any rate, we may give them separately. 

" There is a rehearsal of Merope, and I allow 
myself to be induced to play ' Zopyre ' in 
Mahomet y in order that I may have the pleasure 

207 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

of insulting the impostor. Nevertheless, I am 
ill. The kind of life which I am leading is 
opposed to physical and moral health. My 
ideas are shattered by this agitation of society — 
a monotonous agitation, for wit no less than folly 
may become monotonous." 

" A performance of Merope, admirably played, 
A complete success, quoique point de bienveillance. 
I hear of the death of Madame de Charriere de 
Tuyll. Another devoted friend is lost to me. 
The world is depopulated for my heart." 

" I learn the part of ' Zopyre,' in which I shall 
display a superb combination of strength with 
paternal affection. But I am dissatisfied with the 
first rehearsal ; my gestures are bad." 

" A rehearsal of La fatisse Agnes, which goes 
very badly. Mahomet will go much better. I 
have got over my nervousness." 

"The public performance of Mahomet took 
place yesterday. I played very well. The 
success was complete. We also played Les 
Plaideurs. Schlegel, who was comic in tragedy, 
is not at all gay in comedy." 

" Performance of Phedre. Madame de Stael 
plays admirably. I have acute pains in my side. 
Nature is treating me very cavalierly this winter." 

It was natural that Madame de Stael should 
play admirably, for she had been taught elocution 
by the great Clairon ; but Benjamin Constant's 
estimate of his own performance was not that 
of the spectators. Geneva passed upon it a 

208 



The Developing Drama of the Heart 

criticism which, as it was based upon a pun, 
can only be given in French: "Je ne sais pas 
si c'^tait le roi d'Epire, mais je sais bien que 
cetait le pire des rois." None the less, his 
interest in the drama became so keen that he 
prepared a French version of Wallenstein for 
the Coppet stage. 

All this, however, is by the way. One relates 
it merely to note the make-believe of gaiety that 
coincided with the developing drama of the heart. 
Benjamin Constant was very anxious, during this 
period, to serve Madame de Stael's interests as 
a friend. He tried hard, though without success, 
to obtain her the permission which she sought 
to visit Paris. But the storm of which Sainte- 
Beuve's story gave us the indication is already 
raging beneath the surface, though the cause 
which was to bring it to a climax does not yet 
transpire. We will follow it stage by stage. 

" Lausanne is dull. Still, if a quiet life were 
all I wanted, I should find it here. Passed the 
evening at La Chaumiere. Antoinette makes 
herself agreeable." 

"Got up at five o'clock in the morning. I 
ought always to do so, as I should get on better 
with my work, and should avoid a series of 
melancholy reflections which invariably assail 
me when I awake. 

" Called on Madame la Generale. Antoinette's 
hand is offered to me. I refuse it. I shall regret 
it, but the form of Madame de Stael rises as a 
reproach between me and all my projects. 
o 209 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

** Dined with d'Arlens. Spent the evening 
at Dorigny. I think Antoinette likes me. She is 

good and sweet Ifl could but How restful 

it would be ! Why not profit peaceably by the 
friendship that is here offered to me ? Is not real 
happiness to be found only in the common lot ? " 

"A letter from Madame de Stael. It is the 
collapse of the universe, and the movement of 
chaos. And yet, with all her faults, I prefer her 
to everything else. I decide to rejoin her at 
Auxerre. I am in a state of uncertainty about 
everything, like a vessel driven by two opposing 
tempests." 

" My father being ill, I go to Dole, and am 
detained there several days. My father is gentle 
and affectionate with me, and that does me good. 
But a letter from Madame de Stael overtakes me. 
All the volcanoes in the world make less of a 
blaze than she does. What am I to do ? The 
struggle wears me out. I must lie down in my 
bark and go to sleep in the midst of the tempest." 

" My father is better, and I start for Auxerre. 
The chief cause of the agitation of my life is the 
need of loving. I must satisfy it at all costs." 

"I go to Coppet, where Madame de Stael is 
back again. The poet Monti arrives there. He 
has a superb face, gentle and proud. His de- 
clamations in verse are very remarkable. He 
is a true poet, passionate, impetuous, weak, 
nervous, mobile, the Italian analogue of Chenier, 
though of more value than Chenier. 

** In the evening I have a terrible scene with 

2IO 



Rupture Imminent 

Madame de Stael. I announce that I will 
definitely break with her, and then there is a 
second scene. Fury ; reconciliation impossible ; 
departure difficult. I must get married." 

" I hear of the bankruptcy of M. Recamier. 
Here is trouble for another of my friends ! Does 
misfortune only befall the good ? Madame de 
Stael has reconquered me'' 

** Back at Geneva, where I establish myself 
to get on more steadily with my work. I re-read 
several passages of my book on philosophy. 
I am satisfied with it, but I have still much 
ground to cover, and town life does not allow 
me to get on with it. One cannot desert all 
one's friends and sulk with the whole world. 
Still, I am sick to death of society gossip. 
To-day it has given me a fever. I pass the 
evening with Amelie Fabri." 

"Dinner with Madame de Germany, and 
supper with Argand ; the whole business very 
tiresome. 

"It is still my inclination to break with 
Madame de Stael; but every time that I feel 
that inclination I am destined to receive the 
contrary impression on the following day. 
Nevertheless, her impetuosity and her imprudences 
are a torment and a perpetual danger to me. 
Let us break it off, then, if we can. It is my one 
chance of a quiet life." 

" Schlegel is very ill ; his fears are ridiculous. 
He demands doctors right and left. There 
comes a German physician, who proves to be 

211 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

a man of learning and intelligence. Decidedly 
there is more profundity in that nation than in ours. 
" A letter from Madame Lindsay, who always 
writes as if I were persecuting her to let me 
see her. A singular device, for I do not even 
dream of doing so. One finds the queerest ideas 
with this half of the human race, as witness the 
wrath of Mme C. because I permitted myself to 
say that her son was like her." 

"I enter to-day, October 25, 1806, upon my 
fortieth year. All my life has been agitated, 
but never have I suffered such anguish and 
uncertainty as at present." 

"Off again to Paris, to work on behalf of 
Madame de Stael." 

" A journey to my farm near Etampes. What 
an oyster's life is that of a farmer ! But perhaps 
it is the better sort of life." 

So the Diary for the year concludes. The 
passages quoted, though stormy, are only the 
premonitory symptoms of the storm to come. 
If they show the writer tiring of his mistress, at 
least they do not show him attracted by any 
other woman. That new fact does not appear 
in the correspondence until 1807, when Charlotte 
comes into the story. 

We have met her before in this narrative. 
She was Mile von Hardenberg, afterwards 
Madame von Marenholz, and now Madame 
Dutertre, the wife of a French dmigre for whom 
we have seen the Diarist expressing his contempt. 

212 



Madame Dutertre 

He had first met her at Brunswick in the days 
of the liaison with Madame de Charriere. There 
are references to her, not in the best taste, in the 
letters to Madame de Charriere. It would seem 
that she threw herself at Benjamin Constant's 
head, and that, while flirting with her, he laughed 
at her, and then repented and felt ashamed. 
He therefore begs Madame de Charriere to burn 
the letters relating to her, since, "if they fell 
into the hands of strangers, they would give the 
final blow to my moribund reputation ; " and the 
presumption is that Madame de Charriere com- 
plied with the request. 

Strangely enough, however, Charlotte was not 
forgotten, and we have noted the mention of her 
name in the letters to Cousin Rosalie. The 
writer sent no message, but merely made in- 
quiries. Or rather, he wanted to know whether 
Charlotte, on her part, remembered and inquired. 
To that extent — though to that extent only — his 
heart had travelled back to her. She had been 
a very restful woman, not in the least exacting ; 
she had not, like Madame de Stael, made scenes 
with him. There was a certain tranquillity even 
in the consecration of memories and sighs to her. 
And now he met her again. 

He was at Paris at the time, "working for 
Madame de Stael " ; and he writes on this 
subject, and on others. 

" I have seen Fouchd several times. I will 
not weary of serving Madame de Stael, but I 

213 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

meet with a great deal of opposition. I am 
going to write a novel which will be the history 
of my life. All serious work has become impos- 
sible to me in the midst of my tormented life. . . . 
"... I have finished my novel in a fortnight. 
I have read it to Hochet, who is very pleased 
with it." 

The novel thus dashed off in a fortnight was 
Adolphe — the one vital and enduring book that 
Benjamin Constant wrote. He is sometimes 
called Adolphe after his hero, just as Madame de 
Stael is called Corinne after her heroine. He 
did not publish it, however, until several years 
later, and discussion of it may for the present be 
deferred. Our business now is with the impres- 
sion which Charlotte made upon her reappearance. 
Allusions to her alternate with allusions to 
Madame de Stael — her business and her anger — 
to the writer's work, and to his health. 

** I am now at my country seat, and more quiet. 
I have resumed my great work on Religion, and I 
am getting on very well with it. It has made 
great progress, but now I am off again to join 
Madame de Stael at Acosta. She wants me for 
her business, which seems to be taking a turn 
for the better. More travelling ! More packing ! " 

"A letter from my father, who demands my 
presence. He wants me to go to Besan9on and 
get myself in a further mess with his new family.^ 
I will not do it. Dinner with M. de Wimont. 
One man bores me as much as another. I have 
^ Benjamin's father had married his housekeeper. 
214 



Proposition made to M. Dutertre 

seen Garat about Madame de Stael's permit. 
I hope she will have time to finish the publication 
of Corinne. The articles which I have just pub- 
lished on this work have had a great succsss." 

" I often visit Madame Dutertre. She has a 
great charm for me. There is something piquant 
in her intelligence, and she has that sweetness 
and goodness which always have the effect of 
making me happy. I feel that a union with h^r 
would be the repose of my life. If M. Dutertre 
is willing to break ties to which he seems to 
attach little importance, my future is there, and 
Charlotte accepts the proposal." 

Benjamin means, that is to say, to marry 
Madame Dutertre if M. Dutertre can be per- 
suaded to divorce her. He was ultimately 
persuaded by means of a considerable cash pay- 
ment. In the meantime, however, Madame de 
Stael had obtained at least an inkling of what 
was happening. 

"A letter from Madame de Stael. What a 
Fury! Heaven save us from each other! 

" Passed the evening at Madame R^camier's 
with Fauriel. I read them my novel, which affected 
them strangely. The character of the hero revolts 
them. Decidedly people cannot understand me." 

" My eyes are getting worse. I have consulted 

V . It is a weakening of the optic nerve, and 

what I Want is rest. They applied a seton. The 
physical pain is nothing. A letter from Madame 
de Stael arrives at this moment, and her insults 
find me covered with blood and fainting." 

215 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Madame de Stael, however, had reason for 
her jealousy, and her lover was not so ill that he 
could not press his suit with Madame Dutertre. 

" Called upon Madame Dutertre, whose appear- 
ance has much improved. I make proposals to 
her which she does not reject. This evening I 
shall be master of the citadel. The resistance 
has lasted long enough." 

" I go to the country with Charlotte. She is 
an angel of sweetness and charm. I love her 
more and more every day. She is gentle and 
lovable. How mad a fool I was to repel her 
twelve years ago ! What a mad passion for 
independence it was that dominated me, and 
ended by placing me under the domination of the 
most imperious creature in the world ! " 

" We return to Paris. Mad days ; delights of 
love. What the devil does it all mean? It is 
twelve years since I felt anything of the sort — 
how mad ! This woman whose love I have 
refused a hundred times, who has always loved 
me, whom I have repeatedly repulsed, whom I 
quitted without regret eighteen months ago, to 
whom I have written a hundred indifferent letters, 
from whom I took away my own letters only last 
Monday — this same woman is turning my head 
to-day. Evidently the comparison with Madame 
de Stael is the cause of it all. The contrast 
between her impetuosity, her egoism, her constant 
occupation with herself, and Charlotte's calm, 
humility, and modesty, and sweetness, makes the 
latter a thousand times more dear to me. I am 
tired of the 'man-woman,' whose iron hand has 

216 



A Momentary Reaction 

held me enchained for ten years, when I have 
with me a woman who is really a woman to 
intoxicate and enchant me. If I can marry her, 
I hesitate no longer. Everything depends upon 
the line taken by M. Dutertre." 

For a moment there ensues reaction, and an 
alarming premonition. 

** Passed the evening with Charlotte. Can it 
be that the fever is passing and the boredom 
beginning ? I am devilishly afraid it is. She is 
full of charm, it is true, but there is little variety 
about her, and she is of a very restless tempera- 
ment." 

It seems, however, that he has wronged her, 
or misread his heart, for now we read : — 

"A touching letter from Charlotte. I am 
unjust to her. She is an angel. A stiff and 
bitter letter from Madame de Stael. My God, 
how she bores me ! " 

" People are talking about me, not in the 
kindest manner. They are already talking of 
the effect of the double divorce, arranged for a 
purpose settled in advance. No matter. Char- 
lotte is an angel, and an insipid society need 
not think that its opinion will prevent me from 
marrying her. And yet, what obstacles there 
are ! I shudder at the thought of a wife who 
will not be received anywhere. Perhaps I shall 
bury myself at Lausanne. Otherwise I am sure 
I shall commit suicide within six months." 

" Lunch with Gerando. . . . Pack up my 
217 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

manuscripts. I have twelve thousand francs at 
my disposal. Will that help me to bring about 
a rupture and a marriage in which I shall find 
peace ? " 

Hardly has he written that, however, than the 
old influence reasserts itself. Benjamin is back 
with Madame de Stael, "under pretence of help- 
ing her with her affairs." He speaks of " scenes," 
and the consciousness on both sides that rupture 
is imminent. M. Dutertre, meanwhile, is feign- 
ing jealousy and raising his price, and Benjamin 
wavers in spite of the contrast between Charlotte's 
sweet reasonableness and " this fury who pursues 
me, foaming at the mouth, with a dagger in her 
hand." At last, however, his agreement is con- 
cluded. The husband's application for divorce is 
despatched to Germany. But then : — 

" Madame de Stael is on my track again. She 
will no longer hear of the breach of our relations. 
My simplest course is not to see her again, but to 
wait at Lausanne for the orders of Charlotte — 
that angel whom I bless for saving me. Schlegel 
writes that Madame de Stael says she will kill 
herself if I leave her. I don't believe a word of 
it, but it is an untimely rumour for my ears. I 
feel that I shall be regarded as a monster if I do 
abandon her ; if I do not abandon her, I shall die. 
I regret her, and I hate her." 

Then he is lured to Coppet in a melting mood, 
but, after a scene of reconciliation, makes his 
escape to Lausanne. In vain. 

218 



Fruitless Endeavours to Escape 

*• Alas ! What was the use of flight ? Madame 
de Stael is here, and all my plans are overturned. 
There is a frightful scene, lasting till five o'clock 
in the morning. I am violent, and put myself in 
the wrong. Instead of finding support here 
[from his relatives], I only meet with anathemas 
against a woman capable of a double divorce. 
Poor dear Charlotte, I will not desert you." 

None the less, he is dragged off again to Coppet, 
and compelled to take part in the theatrical per- 
formances. Charlotte does not write, and he is 
afraid that the agony of his mind may cause 
him to forget his lines. He observes that the 
Chevalier de Langallerie — the head of a sect 
of mystics at Lausanne — is fascinated by Madame 
de Stael. He wishes she would yield herself to 
him, "as that would give her something to do." 
He adds : " I have lunched with the Chevalier, 
and done what I can to induce Madame de Stael 
to accept the consolations which he offers her." 
But it is useless: "she is not ready to become 
religious." He is only comforted when a long 
letter from Charlotte at last arrives. "How 
sensible she is ! " he exclaims. "How reasonable, 
and how affectionate ! " It is a further comfort 
to discover that his aunt, Madame de Nassau, 
is not so scandalised as he had supposed. " She 
says shewill receive Charlotte with every kindness," 
and it is to be presumed that the rest of the family 
will follow her lead. He will act at once, there- 
fore ; he will be off on the morrow. But then : — 

219 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

** What did I say ? Everything is upside down 
again, and this effort is impossible to me. My 
letter is torn up. Some magic power overrules 
me. I am going to Coppet. Good God ! What 
am I going to do there ? " 

" She came ; she threw herself at my feet ; she 
uttered fearful cries of pain and desolation. A 
heart of iron could not have resisted. I am back 
at Coppet with her, and I have promised to 
remain for six weeks, and Charlotte is expecting 
me at the end of the month. Good God ! What 
am I to do ? I am trampling my future and my 
happiness under foot." 

One of the things which he aoes is to adapt 
Wallenstei7t for Madame de Stael's theatre. He 
works desperately hard at it, composing no less 
than 328 lines of verse in a single day. He is 
rather pleased with the result ; he reads the first 
act to the company, and is applauded, though his 
acting is a sorry performance. But he still drags 
at his chains, though occasionally tempted to let 
them be riveted on him afresh. 

*' A letter from Charlotte, more loving and more 
sure of me than ever. Would she forgive me if 
she knew where I am and what I am doing ? 
How slowly the time passes ! Into what abysm 
have I thrown myself? A terrible scene in the 
evening. Shall I get out of it alive ? I have to 
pass my time in lying and deception to avoid the 
frenzy which frightens me. If it were not for 
the hope afforded by Madame de Stael's approach- 
ing departure for Vienna, this existence would be 

220 



A Curious Position 

intolerable to me. To console myself I pass my 
time in imagining how things will go if they go 
well. This is my castle in the air. Charlotte 
finishes her arrangements and makes her prepara- 
tions in secret. Madame de Stael starts for 
Vienna, suspecting nothing. I marry Charlotte, 
and we spend the winter pleasantly at Lausanne. 
If that can be contrived, I shall know how to 
profit by my happiness." 

" My tragedy makes great progress ; it is a 
pleasant occupation for me. The time passes, 
but the dangers remain. Madame de Stael is 
very useful to me for my tragedy, and she is 
so good and so gentle to me, that if it were not 
for the recollection of past violences, the attach- 
ment would revive. Nevertheless, my social 
position is curious. Here am I between two 
women — one of whom has wronged me by 
refusing to marry me, while the other, by marry- 
ing me, will do me an injury." 

" Madame de Stael resumes her terrible 
character. I work furiously to deaden my feel- 
ings. I read two acts to Chateauvieux, who is 
delighted with them. What a torture it is to 
live with a person who is always feeling the 
pulse of her own sensibility, and gets angry 
when one does not take sufficient interest in 
this self-analysis ! 

"A letter from Charlotte. She knows every- 
thing. She is sad and discouraged, but remains 
faithful to me. I will not desert her. My God ! 
If only the other would take her departure ! " 

" Went to Lausanne. Everybody disapproves 

221 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

of my return to Coppet. Phedre is produced 
again. Madame de Stael plays admirably. My 
tragedy is becoming a pretext to prolong my 
stay." 

"Charlotte's character is admirably loyal and 
reasonable, but her vacillating conduct might 
push her to extremes, especially when she arrives 
at BesanQon and finds that I am not there. My 
father writes that he wants to come to me here — 
there remained but that! Madame de Stael is 
certainly very good, and of great intelligence. 
My piece will be superb. I have only i8o lines 
to write to finish it." 

" Charlotte is at Besan^on in despair, and my 
future is in peril. I can hesitate no longer. My 
father will serve me as a pretext, and I am off." 

" Besancon. — I find Charlotte very ill. She is 
in delirium, and shudders at the sound of my 
voice, crying out : * That is the man who is 
killing me.' I throw myself at the feet of 
Providence, to ask pardon for my criminal 
follies, and pray for strength to get out of this 
terrible position." 

" After some days of suffering and anguish, 
Charlotte begins to recover. Her courage and 
her confidence in me have returned to her, and 
my happiness is assured. 

" Nevertheless, I have again written three times 
to Madame de Stael — letters which will perhaps 
cause her pain. But it must be so. The final 
moment is approaching." 



222 



CHAPTER XIX 

Stormy scenes at Coppet — Benjamin's confidences to his aunt — 
His endeavours to escape — He joins Charlotte at Brevans. 

The Journal Intime breaks off abruptly in 
1807, not to be resumed until 181 1 ; so that^ for 
the rest of our story, we have to seek other 
sources of information. The material, however, 
is abundant. We know what Benjamin told his 
aunt and his cousin ; we know what Rosalie told 
her brother Charles. 

Rosalie, at this stage, was only partly in her 
cousin's confidence. His letters to her do not 
mention Charlotte, though they are full of his 
desire for a definitive separation from Madame 
de Stael. ** My love for her," he writes, " is only 
friendship, and I know that this friendship will be 
flouted as soon as it ceases to be the determining 
factor of my life ; " and he adds that his wish to 
act with consideration is reducing him to despair. 
'* The end of a liaison that has lasted so long with 
a person whose qualities are so admirable, the 
idea that I cannot induce her to accept my friend- 
ship as a substitute for a tie which is no longer a 
source of happiness to either of us, the strange 
feeling that nothing that I may do to-day will in 
the least diminish her dissatisfaction with what 

223 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

I am going to do presently — all this darkens my 
thoughts and makes my life heavy and melancholy." 
He protests that he is being treated badly : 
" Returning here [to Paris at the end of June 
1807], I found letters awaiting me, too cruel to 
be addressed to a highway robber, and she has 
written others to mutual friends in which she says 
the most awful things about my character. It 
is hard to have to submit to that after having 
accompanied her, for the last year, from inn to 
inn, accommodating myself to a life absolutely 
opposed to my tastes and exceedingly bad for my 
health, resigning myself to be misunderstood and 
misjudged by the world — all because she was in 
exile and was unhappy." The "perpetual move- 
ment," he exclaims, is a weariness to him ; but he 
none the less lets himself be lured back to Coppet, 
where furious scenes are once more enacted. He 
complains of "a combination of violence and 
affection which shakes my soul to its foundations." 
Argument is in vain. Madame de Stael threatens 
to kills herself if she is abandoned. "Her children, 
her servants, her friends, her acquaintances are all 
in her confidence with regard to this threat, and 
they all regard me as a monster because I do not 
appease her sufferings." But what is to be done ? 
" I pass my days in disputing with her, and my 
nights in weeping over her." 

Benjamin, as we have already seen, fled from 
his tumultuous surroundings and sought refuge at 
Lausanne, where Madame de Stael speedily came 

224 



Rosalie de Constant Intervenes 

to fetch him. His own narrative of the incident, 
however, is tame and cold compared with that of 
his cousin Rosalie, who, at least at that hour, held 
Madame de Stael in abhorrence. "When," she 
writes, **he was alarmed for his failing eyesight, 
instead of consoling him, she wrote him insulting 
letters. When, in his convalescence, he came to 
his father's house for rest, she had him taken away 
by her valet Eugene and her pedant Schlegel, 
threatening to follow and kill herself before their 
eyes if he did not come. You can imagine my 
uncle's annoyance and indignation." It seemed 
an occasion, therefore, for Rosalie to call at Coppet 
and speak her mind. "I spoke to her," she tells 
her brother, "with the greatest frankness. I told 
her that, when she was free, my wish was that she 
should marry Benjamin, as an act of reparation, 
and because of their similarity of mind, character, 
etc. I added that, in not marrying, they had shown 
their contempt for each other, and that, subse- 
quently, the preferences which she had displayed 
for other men had put Benjamin in the most 
awkward position, that he did not deserve such 
treatment, and that she could not reproach me 
with anything except my desire for his happiness 
and good name. She replied that, sooner than 
lose him, she would marry him whenever I liked, 
and that I had better occupy myself with hastening 
the event. I did not allow myself to be sup- 
pressed, but the conversation ended more amiably 
than it began, and on such a note that we may 
p 225 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

see each other again." And then follows the 
account of the most impetuous of all the scenes 
in which Madame de Stael sought happiness in 
love. It is a long letter, but it is so graphically- 
expressed that it must be given in full. 

" My friendship had not the strength to contend 
against the furious passions of this terrible woman. 
I have already told you about my conversation 
with the too celebrated one, my promise to hold 
my tongue about it until their departure, and their 
plans for playing a tragedy. The tragedy was a 
great success. Never has Hermione been played 
with so much fire and conviction. After the 
performance, which was indeed very agreeable 
and very brilliant, they went away. Benjamin 
stayed behind, vaguely promising to join them 
in a few days' time, but fully resolved upon 
breakinof off his relations with her, while re- 
maining upon friendly terms. He was very 
agitated, and most uncertain how to set about 
it, but quite sure that no method would be satis- 
factory. He was taken in hand by the Chevalier ^ 
and Lisette, who, seeing him unhappy, tried to 
help him after their fashion. He tried their 
moral opium ; but his reason and intelligence 
did not like the taste of it. In the midst of all 
that, the lady, observing that he did not come to 
her, sent her horses, her carriage, her servants — 
the whole caravan, in short — to fetch him. 

'' Early one morning he enters the room, and 
announces : ' I am going to Coppet ; ' and then he 
falls into a fit of despair that would have touched 
your heart. I cried bitterly for him. My aunt 

1 M. de Langallerie. 
226 



An Extraordinary Scene 

and Madame de Nassau met, and he accepted 
their advice — that he should put an end to the 
situation by offering the lady the alternative of 
an early marriage or an amicable rupture. He sets 
out, believing himself firm in this resolve. 

" On the following day, before nine o'clock, v/e 
see him arrive on horseback, ready to drop from 
fatigue. He tells us that, in answer to the re- 
proaches with which she greeted him, he had 
made the proposal agreed upon. Her reply was 
to assemble her children and their tutor and say : 
'There is the man who obliges me to choose 
between despair and the necessity of com- 
promising your existence and your fortune.' 
Benjamin answers this unworthy accusation with 
a formal protest that he will never marry her. 
Then she gets up, throws herself, screaming, on 
the ground, passes her handkerchief round her 
neck to throttle herself, and in fact makes one of 
those fearful scenes which she can always make 
when she chooses, and which poor Benjamin 
cannot resist. He was weak enough to end by 
speaking words of tenderness. On the following 
morning, however, he woke early, and once more 
perceived the horror of his position. He comes 
downstairs, finds his horse in the yard, mounts, 
and rides here without stopping. We did what we 
could, and Madame de Nassau, who is very fond 
of him, though she blames his weakness, joined us 
in consoling him and fortifying his resolutions. 

** When we had agreed upon a reasonable plan, 
she left us, and Benjamin was beginning to calm 
himself when we heard screams below. He re- 
cognised her voice. My first impulse was to leave 
the room and lock him in. Going out, I find her 

227 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

on her back on the staircase, with her bosom bare, 
and her dishevelled locks sweeping the steps. 
' Where is he ? ' she screams. ' I must find him 
again.' My idea is to say that he is not here. 
She has been looking for him all over the town. 
My aunt lifts her to her feet, and leads her into 
your room. Meanwhile Benjamin is knocking 
at the door of the drawing-room, and I have 
to open it. She hears him, runs to him, throws 
herself into his arms, and then falls on the floor 
again, uttering the most bitter reproaches. 
'What right have you,' I ask her, 'to make him 
miserable, and torment his life ? ' Whereupon 
she overwhelms me with the most cruel insults 
that you can imagine. In my indignation at this 
dreadful scene, at the gentleness of my aunt, 
whom she has been cunning enough to flatter, and 
at the fact that Benjamin does not take my part 
as he ouofht, I gfo out to tell Madame de' Nassau 
all about it, and remain at her house while she 
comes here. She did not show any anger, how- 
ever, but only spoke to Benjamin. The upshot of 
it all was that she carried him off to Coppet for sIk 
weeks. He writes us letters thence, full of friend- 
ship, but fairly calm, acquiescing in a strength 
greater than his own, and, as it were, touched by 
this last terrible proof of her love. What do you 
think of this conclusion ? " 

The conclusion, however, was not yet. We 
have only reached the stage at which, as we have 
seen from the Diary, Benjamin found himself held 
by the double promise to stay six weeks with 
Madame de Stael, and to meet Charlotte at the 

228 



Madame de Nassau's Attitude 

end of the month. Madame de Nassau knew 
about Charlotte though Rosalie did not, and our 
best definition of Benjamin's attitude towards the 
two women is to be found in the letters which he 
wrote, not to his cousin, but to his aunt. 

One feels that this aunt must have been a very 
charming and also a very sensible old lady. 
She evidently realised — what so many ladies fail 
to realise — that fault-finding is not the same thing 
as helpful counsel, and that sympathy with the love 
troubles of a man of forty generally means making 
the best of a bad situation. The entanglement 
with Madame de Stael did not please her, but 
she did not waste her time in deploring it. 
Charlotte, the twice-divorced, was not the wife 
she would herself have selected for her nephew ; 
but she respected her nephew's choice, and 
promised to be not only polite but cordial. He 
rewarded her with such confidences as aunts do 
not often receive. 

The degree and character of the confidence 
subsisting between them may perhaps be best 
measured by an extract from a letter which has 
no direct bearing on the writer's personal affairs, 
Benjamin was reporting the death of Madame 
Cottin, the novelist. "She was very ugly," he 
writes, " but she had inspired grand passions. A 
young man committed suicide on her doorstep 
because of her cruelty, and her kindnesses caused 
the death of an old man of seventy. The story 
is the antithesis of that of the lance of Achilles. 

229 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

She died in a very religious frame of mind at 
the age of thirty-four. Religion — I say it in all 
sincerity — religion is an admirable thing, because 
no antecedents stand in its way. It can be grafted 
on ambition, on love, on any passion whatsoever, 
and the graft is successful at all periods of life." 

An aunt to whom a nephew could write, with- 
out rebuke, like that was an aunt whom he could 
trust with his secrets without fear of censorious 
criticism ; and Benjamin's letters to Madame de 
Nassau are indeed of an open-hearted and con- 
vincing candour. His love for Charlotte veritably 
bubbles over. She is ** so pure, so natural, and 
so sweet," that he cannot be an hour in her com- 
pany without feeling that his whole life has been 
lifted on to a new plane of happiness and tran- 
quillity. He insists that this is no transitory 
impression, but that Charlotte has always affected 
him thus every time that he has met her during 
the last four years. At the same time he is most 
sensible of his obligations towards Madame de 
Stael, and most anxious not to cause her any 
avoidable pain ; and it seems to him a fresh 
charm in Charlotte's character that she shares his 
feelings in this respect, and makes no objection to 
his paying yet another visit to Coppet. He is 
aware that he is guilty of deception, and that the 
world would judge him severely if it knew the 
facts ; but he protests that, throughout the whole 
of his tortuous transactions, his motives have 
always been good. The happiness of Madame de 

230 



The Betrothal still a Secret 

Stael, no less than of Charlotte, is, in some sense, 
a deposit in his charge. He must therefore 
postpone his union with the latter until the former 
is provided with " the distractions of which she 
stands in need." And so forth, through a long 
series of letters, in the tone of a man who suffers 
at once from hypertrophy of the conscience and 
atrophy of the will. 

This was in 1808. The Coppet gaieties were 
renewed in the summer of that year. Tieck, the 
sculptor, came there to make a bust of the hostess, 
who was repeating her triumphs on the amateur 
stage, alike as authoress and actress. The house 
was full of people. Benjamin was revising, and 
preparing to print, his tragedy ; and meanwhile, 
masked by the outward show of levity and 
merriment, the drama of real life progressed. 
Charlotte, accompanied by her aunt, the Princess 
von Hardenberg, came to Lausanne ; and the 
Princess dined at Coppet, though she left 
Charlotte at home. Charlotte was affectionately 
received by Madame de Nassau, and the secret of 
her betrothal to Benjamin was kept ; but further 
developments were prevented by the intervention 
of Benjamin's father. It was his wish, it appeared, 
that this marriage, so often delayed, should now 
take place ; and his wish would seem to have 
given Benjamin resolution to act. It was 
arranged that Charlotte should go on a three 
months' visit to M. Juste de Constant at Brevans, 
and that Benjamin should join her there. He 

231 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

did not tell Madame de Stael — he did not dare to 
tell her — but he started. 

" I hope," he writes on December 6, "that, on 
Saturday evening or Sunday morning, I shall be 
at Brevans. I am within sight of port ; but my 
course is from shoal to shoal, and there are still 
two or three reefs of rock to be passed. The 
quiet, if quiet there is, will be a new sensation 
for me." 

The next letter, dated from Brevans on 
December 15, shows him at least in some re- 
spects a man of energy. 

" Here I am, my dear aunt, after travelling 
through such quantities of snow as I never saw 
before. My sledge upset. I spent four days on 
the journey, with eight horses, and a whole army 
of men to clear the track. At last I have arrived, 
with my purse much lightened, but very glad to 
have got clear of those awful roads. I found my 
prisoner fairly well in health, very loving, very 
sweet, and disposed to do whatever she can to 
please me. My father said nothing to me about 
my intentions, but I shall execute them without 
encountering any opposition from him. 

" So I reach the goal at which I have aimed so 
long, with so much constancy, and with such 
strenuous efforts. There is in Madame Dutertre 
a gentleness, an abandon, a simplicity of heart 
which fills my soul with calm. Yet it often 
happens that my memories assail me. My heart 
feels that habits have grown upon it ; and the 
roots that have to be torn up are deep, and bleed 
in secret." 

232 



CHAPTER XX 

Benjamin marries Charlotte secretly — They go to Paris and are 
happy — Madame de Stael is told— Her wrath— Her sons 
threaten Benjamin with personal violence — He promises to 
keep the secret of his marriage a little longer — He returns yet 
again to Coppet— The financial settlement with Madame de 
Stael. 

The Constant marriage received the benediction 
of a Protestant pastor at Brevans in December 
1808 ; that milestone on the journey, at any rate, 
was now safely passed. Yet the words quoted at 
the end of the last chapter expressed a just pre- 
monition. The marriage, like the engagement, 
was a secret from everyone except Madame de 
Nassau. Madame de Stael, knowing nothing 
about it, was still seeking happiness in love. 

For the moment Benjamin and his wife were 
out of her reach at Paris, whither they had 
started early in 1809. His preoccupation with 
his heart did not quite exclude all other interests. 
He writes of the publication of Wallenstein and 
of the attention which it has attracted. He 
mentions that he has received a presentation 
copy of M. de Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs, and 
that the sustained pomposity of the work dis- 
pleases him. But he is, at the same time, 
analysing his feelings and asking himself how 

233 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

far he is really happy. He has, he tells Rosalie, 
a profound wound in his heart : " Though the 
surface may heal, the pain will probably remain 
for ever." And he adds : — 

"It seems to me impossible to be happy ; the 
world has misunderstood me. Yet I must not 
complain, for I have misunderstood myself. If 
only I had met someone, when I was young 
enough, who would have wished to make me 
happy, instead of regarding me simply as created 
to contribute to her happiness ! But everything 
in life happens too late. When the heart is 
capable of happiness, the happiness is not there ; 
when the happiness comes, the heart to feel it is 
lacking." 

To his aunt, at the same period, he addresses 
appeal after appeal on no account to disclose his 
secret. The maintenance of the mystery, he 
writes at the end of March, " is more necessary 
than ever:" Charlotte, he protests, is not urging 
him to dissipate it prematurely ; and he can find 
no words adequate to praise her "goodness,-*' her 
"generosity," her "heroic devotion." Her 
character is devoid of egotism, of vanity, of self- 
interest to a " superhuman " degree ; and she is 
acting in concert with him for the best. 

" I will tell you the details," he says, " when I 
have reached the port towards which I am 
steering. It is straight sailing at present, but 
there is still a shoal to be crossed. We are 
adopting the gentlest, the most generous, the 

234 



A Singular Concession 

most delicate course. I cannot guarantee that 
the result will not, for the moment, be painful ; 
but with two easy consciences and two loving 
hearts one finds a way out of many difficulties. 
Perhaps I am urging you too emphatically to 
keep the secret of which you have so long been 
the guardian ; but it is more important than ever 
that you should do so, for it is indispensable that 
the delicacy of our conduct should not figure as 
irony of the bitterest kind." 

None the less, the time was now at hand when 
Madame de Stael must be told, and the husband 
and wife came to Switzerland to tell her. It 
appears that Charlotte told her in Benjamin's 
presence, in the early days of May, with a shame- 
faced and apologetic air. She could not help it, 
she said ; Benjamin was "so good." The scene 
which ensued is said by some of the biographers 
to have been violent. Probably it was. Madame 
de Stael was apt to be violent, and she was not 
likely to be reconciled to her defeat by finding 
Charlotte "insipid." The letter to Madame de 
Nassau, however, says nothing of any dispute, 
but relates chiefly to the singular concession 
which Madame de Stael was able to obtain. 

"I have ensured," Benjamin writes, "the 
maintenance of our friendship, to which, as you 
know, I attach great value, by promising to keep 
my marriage secret a little longer, and leaving 
her the means of preparing the public mind to 
believe that the dissolution of our relationship is 
due to her own will and initiative. . . . Madame 

235 



\ 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

de Hardenberg has seconded my endeavours with 
all the devotion of profound affection, and all the 
delicacy of true sensibility, offering and consent- 
ing to submit to a difficult situation in order to 
avoid causing pain. I am indebted to her for 
all the happiness which I hope to enjoy with her, 
and all the peace of mind which I have long been 
desiring." 

That is one version ; but Rosalie's letter to 
Charles represents Charlotte as an intimidated 
rather than a consenting party to the strange 
transaction. 

" She [Madame de Stael] was so violent," is 
the cousin's account, "and she held out such 
threats of suicide and worse, that she extorted 
from them both a promise on their word of 
honour that they would not make their marriage 
known yet awhile, and that he would remain at 
Coppet. All this puts him in the most annoying 
and ridiculous position, and I don't know how it 
will end. After the frightful scene which I 
described to you, I wanted no more of their 
confidences." 

Scene or no scene, Charlotte's goodness of 
heart was certainly leading her into extraordinary 
courses ; and it is no wonder that Madame de 
Nassau wrote saying that the situation reminded 
her of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Yet there was a 
point beyond which even Charlotte would not go. 
The suggestion that, while Benjamin stayed at 
Coppet, she should go to Germany, annoyed her. 
" For the first time since I have known her," 

236 



Charlotte's "Angelic Character" 

writes her husband, ** I find it difficult to persuade 
her to follow my advice." It was proposed, as a 
compromise, that she should go to Berne, but 
that course also had to be abandoned in de- 
ference to her objections. The final decision was 
that she should go on a visit to Benjamin's father. 
" 1 swear to you," Benjamin writes, at this point, 
to his aunt, "that, if I were offered the treasures 
of Peru, the youth of Hebe, and the beauty of 
the Venus de Medicis, I should still prefer 
Charlotte." Preferring Charlotte, however, he 
remained with Madame de Stael, and with her 
came presently to Lyons to see Talma play. 

*' I have followed her," writes Sismondi to the 
Comtesse d'Albany, on June i6, "not so much 
for the purpose of seeing the king of the French 
stage, as in order not to leave her in her present 
condition of ill-health and melancholy. Pier head 
to-day is hardly free to enjoy the spectacle which 
she was so ardently anxious to witness." 

Her depression was due to the fact that 
Benjamin left her at Lyons, and went to Dole. 
He was evidently getting very tired of the false 
and embarrassing position which he occupied. 
His letters show him reproaching himself for 
behaving like a truant schoolboy. He has the 
more reason to reproach himself, because he has 
received the most cordial letters from Charlotte's 
relatives in Germany, and because every day 
brings him some fresh proof of Charlotte's 
"angelic character." "Our separation," he says, 

237 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" has been very painful. However, her reason 
was convinced, and her confidence in me has not 
failed, and her affection, after two years' trial, has 
not diminished. I ask Heaven no other favour 
than to grant her soon all the happiness which 
she deserves." 

At Dole, meanwhile, he found that he had not 
yet escaped from Madame de Stael. She did 
not follow him, indeed, but she sent her son 
Auguste to fetch him ; and Auguste evidently 
discharged his errand in the spirit of a fire-eater, 
for we read : — 

" What I am going to tell you, my dear aunt, 
is strictly confidential. I am convinced — and I 
have evidence — that if I took my departure in 
a hurry, Madame de Stael's eldest son, who is 
nineteen, and who worships his mother, seeing 
her once more in the condition into which she 
was thrown by my last departure to Dole, would 
go to the point of challenging me. I have had 
my opportunities of proving that this sort of thing 
does not frighten me. Consequently I can say 
without blushing that it would be a terrible thing 
for me to have to draw my sword against a boy 
whom I have known almost ever since he was 
born. I swear to you that, when he came to 
fetch me at Dole, he was beside himself with 
rage, and if he refrained from offensive ex- 
pressions, that was only because he had promised 
his mother to do so." 

Nor was it only Auguste de Stael who 
breathed threatenings. His younger brother 

238 



Between Threats and Tears 

Albert was roused to an equal indignation. 
There was a real danger of "bloody scenes" be- 
tween Benjamin and these young men. ** Though 
she is incapable of wishing such a thing, she 
abandons herself to such expressions of violence 
that they might very well believe that they were 
serving her interests by proceeding to the last 
extremity." Meanwhile he hopes, by persuasive 
gentleness, to bring Madame de Stael to reason. 
He and she cannot afford to declare open war 
against each other ; their relations have been too 
confidential, and they share too many secrets. 
Therefore he is back at Coppet, seeing what can 
be done. Surely it is not excessive to devote a 
fortnight to the winding up of a liaison which has 
lasted fifteen years. When he does go, he will 
go far — not to Lausanne or Dole, whither he 
would surely be pursued, but to Paris, where 
Madame de Stael cannot come ; and he expects 
to be off, at the latest, between the 15th and 
20th of August. 

Of course the limit of the fortnight was ex- 
ceeded. Perhaps Benjamin lingered on, hoping 
to facilitate his departure by wearing out his 
welcome. More probably he was kept a prisoner 
by the tears of his mistress and the drawn swords 
of her sons. At all events, the elastic fortnight 
was extended to three months, and might have 
been extended to an even greater length, if it had 
not been for a very outspoken letter in which 
Cousin Rosalie repeated the gossip that was 

239 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

circulating in Lausanne. People were whisper- 
ing, said Rosalie, that Madame de Stael had said 
that he was remaining at Coppet from interested 
pecuniary motives. 

He did, indubitably, owe her money. It is 
easy to suggest — it has, in fact, been suggested — 
that she deliberately lent him money for the 
purpose of strengthening her hold upon him ; 
and the measure is certainly one which has some- 
times been adopted by desperate women seeking 
happiness in love. The correspondence, how- 
ever, indicates a more honourable explanation. 
Benjamin had been directing Madame de Stael's 
investments. A balance was due to her ; but 
there could not be a final settlement until the 
lawyers had unravelled the accounts. They were 
at work on the business ; but it was difficult and 
tedious, and very likely Madame de Stael did not 
help to expedite it. But as for the slander, 
Benjamin not only repudiated it with vehemence, 
but absolutely declined to believe that it had 
been circulated by Madame de Stael. In this 
respect, at all events, he had a chivalrous faith 
in her which we may share. 

The mischievous rumours, however, reflected 
not only on Benjamin but on his wife. This 
must not be ; and the only way of putting a stop 
to the gossip was to pack and go. He packed 
and went, and actually succeeded in getting away 
without a quarrel, and in the belief that he was 
entitled to say of his relations with Madame de 

240 



Two Sides of the Picture 

Stael — what Gibbon had said of his relations 
with her mother — that " love subsided in friend- 
ship and esteem." " I have done," he writes to 
Madame de Nassau, on October 19, "all that 
was in my power to create the friendship that 
was so necessary to me after a liaison of fifteen 
years' standing, and I shall not be perfectly happy 
unless 1 succeed." 

Even now, however, the waters which Benjamin 
navigated were not quite calm. Painful letters 
followed him from Coppet — "magic pictures "of 
the misery of a deserted mistress — and disturbed 
his peace of mind. Madame de Stael had bought 
his father with money, and the old man was 
publicly declaring at Lausanne that his sympathies 
were with her rather than with Charlotte. Doubts, 
which Madame de Nassau shared, were being 
thrown upon the validity of his marriage ; and 
he had to admit that certain formalities had been 
neglected — that Charlotte, for instance, had come 
to the ceremony without a baptismal certificate — 
though he protested that the omission did not 
invalidate the union, but only rendered her liable 
to a fine. 

That was the dark side of the picture. The 
bright side of it was that he was in Paris — 
whither Madame de Stael could not pursue him 
— and that Charlotte was with him, and that her 
relatives and his friends smiled kindly on the 
situation. Even the double divorce, it appeared, 
was not unfavourably regarded. Divorce, said 
Q 241 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the Catholics, was forbidden to them by the regu- 
lations of their Church, but they saw no reason 
why Protestants should not avail themselves of 
the religious privileges of their rriore liberal creed. 
And Rosalie was of the same opinion. " Three 
husbands," she wrote to Charles, "is a large 
number, but there was someone in the Gospel 
who had seven husbands and yet seems to have 
been an honest woman." 

At Paris, therefore, Benjamin fulfilled the 
necessary formalities, and made the fact of his 
marriage public. There is a delightful humour 
in the letter in which he tells his aunt that he 
has done so. 

*' Good-bye, my dear aunt," he writes. " There 
have been marriages that have been concluded 
with greater simplicity and announced with greater 
expedition than mine. But there has never 
been a husband whose wife has made him more 
happy, and every day that passes increases my 
attachment to her who has restored me the felicity 
that I had lost." 

So far, so good. It only remained for 
Benjamin to wind up his pecuniary as well as 
his sentimental relations with Madame de Stael. 
His next visit to Coppet, in March 1810, had 
this and no other object, and he found Madame 
de Stael still sulking and still reluctant to facilitate 
business. " It is a matter of importance to me," 
he writes, " to compel Madame de Stael to accept 
the money which I owe her, and I can only do 

242 



A Financial Settlement 

this by going into every account in minutest 
detail. Whenever I have asked her to tell me 
the amount of my indebtedness to her, she has 
always replied that she knew nothing about it ; 
and whether her motive be friendship or revenge 
or a combination of the two sentiments, nothing 
would please her better than that I should go 
away leaving her my creditor." 

Somehow or other, however, a settlement was 
arrived at. " It is a proof," says Benjamin, "that 
Heaven rewards good intentions. For it is only 
my intentions that have always been good ; most 
of my actions have been awkward and clumsy." 
It was a true saying in a general way, but hardly 
true in this particular instance, if we may judge 
from Rosalie's account of his conduct. "He 
took her eldest son," she writes, "a man of 
twenty, and of a very reasonable disposition, as 
arbitrator and judge. Some papers were missing 
and had to be sent for from Paris. During the 
interval he came to see us ; and though his 
behaviour had made us all very uneasy, and I 
had told him so without mincing my words, we 
were good friends again, and glad to see each 
other." "Her children," says a later letter by 
Charles de Constant, "speak very highly of 
Benjamin's conduct." 



243 



CHAPTER XXI 

Mysticism at Coppet — Madame de Stael writes De UAllemagne 
and goes to France — Her manuscript is confiscated, and she 
is expelled — She returns to Coppet, and endures petty per- 
secutions. 

The troubles of the heart did not, in the case 
of Madame de Stael, interfere with the march 
of intellect ; they even coincided with a kind of 
religious awakening. 

All through the months in which her tears 
and the threats of her sons kept Benjamin 
Constant separated from his wife, Coppet was 
full of people among whom a spirit of Revivalism 
was alive. The pedant Schlegel was inclining 
to the mystic Quietism of Madame Guyon. His 
last words to Benjamin, when the lover did at 
last manage to emancipate himself from the 
thraldom of his mistress, were an exhortation to 
him to advance the cause of religion in France 
— a task which Benjamin only declined because 
he felt that the case of France was hopeless. 
Bonstetten, whose tendencies were purely 
Voltairean, noted the change that had come 
over the atmosphere in one of his letters to 
Frederika Brun. " Nothing," he informed that 
lady, "is more altered than Coppet. You will 
see that everybody is becoming Catholic, Martin- 

244 



Mysticism at Coppet 

istic/ mystic, all through Schlegel, and everything 
is now German. . . . Madame Krudner has also 
paid a flying visit, and spoke of nothing but 
Heaven and Hell." 

Who was in earnest in these matters, and how 
far the earnestness went, is a little difficult to say. 
We have already, however, seen Benjamin 
Constant complaining in his Diary that the 
fervour of the Chevalier de Langallerie had 
failed to persuade Madame de Stael to accept 
the consolations of religion as a substitute for a 
liaison with him ; and it is not at all unlikely 
that her mysticism was largely due to her known 
habit of dosing herself with opium, and that the 
true picture of her mental attitude is that given 
in the letter which Henri Meister's nephew, Hess, 
wrote to his uncle on the subject. 

"Ah, how I wish," he wrote, "that you could 
induce a person who is dear to you, Madame de 
Stael, to share the view you have expressed ' On 
Serenity in Old Age.' She needs this badly. 
Never have I see anyone look forward with such 
dread as she does to the hour when she must 
give up the idea of making sensations and shining 
in the world ; and as she always goes to extremes 
in whatever she does, she will only abandon this 
infatuation for the illusory triumphs of life by 
plunging into mysticism. She has already made 
a beginning, and M. Schlegel is working as hard 
as he can to complete the process. During the 

^ The Martinists were a theurgic sect founded by Martinez Pas- 
qualis (1715-1779). Little is known as to their doctrines. 

245 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

winter she saw a great deal of a number of 
people whose religious ideas are of a very 
extravagant complexion. Madame de Stael 
fluctuates between these extravagant ideas and 
a need for society, distraction, and frivolous 
pleasures. She cannot conceive of the existence 
of a mean between the two extremes." 

The Philistine youth writes unkindly, though 
not, perhaps, unjustly ; but it should be added 
that the distractions of religion and society did 
not, any more than the pains of unrequited love, 
impede the progress of literary work. In the 
intervals of mystic exaltation and ecstasy, Madame 
de Stael wrote what is generally esteemed her best 
book, De V Alleinagne. Almost every evening 
she gathered her fellow-mystics around her — 
they were nearly all mystics who had been more 
than once divorced — and read them what she had 
written during the day. Adam Oelenschlager ^ and 
Zacharlas Werner, the German poets, Mathieu de 
Montmorency, M. de Sabran, as well as Schlegel, 
Sismondi, and the unfaithful Benjamin Constant, 
were included in the audience at her feet. 

The work being finished, and the relations 
with Benjamin being simultaneously placed on 
their new footing, Madame de Stael was again 
bitten by that desire to travel, which, like the 
gadfly, was always driving her from one habita- 
tion to another, and never suffering her to find 

^ He enriched German literature with subjects derived from the 
heroic Scandinavian period. 

246 



The Coppet Life Reproduced 

rest in any. She had some idea of visiting 
America, where much of her money was invested, 
with the idea of making a further voyage thence 
to England; and she even procured passports 
for that purpose. Paris, however, was, for the 
time being, the more powerful magnet. She 
wanted at least to approach the capital in order 
to superintend the publication of her book ; and 
she went to the Chateau of Chaumont-sur- Loire, 
whence she moved, on the return of the proprietor, 
to the Chateau de Fosse. Mathieu de Mont- 
morency, the two Barantes, Schlegel, and 
Madame Rdcamier were with her there. Other 
visitors were from time to time received. The 
Coppet life — work in the morning and entertain- 
ments in the evening — was, so far as might be, 
reproduced. The scene is depicted in Dix 
Annees d'Exil. 

** Hardly had we arrived when an Italian 
musician, who was with me as my daughter's 
teacher, began to play the guitar. My daughter 
accompanied on the harp the sweet voice of my 
beautiful friend, Madame Recamier, and the 
peasants gathered under our windows, astonished 
to see this colony of troubadours which had come 
to give life to the solitude of their master. . . . 
We often used to sing a charming air composed 
by the Queen of Holland, with the refrain : 
* Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra.' After 
dinner the idea occurred to us to sit round a 
green table, and play a paper game instead of 
talking. We could not bear the thought 

247 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

of breaking- through our practice even when 
strangers arrived ; and our petit poste, as we 
called our pastime, was always continued. Our 
life passed in this fashion, and if I may judge 
by my own case, the time hung heavily on no one. 
" The opera of Cinderella was then making 
a good deal of stir in Paris, and I wanted to go 
and see it performed in a bad provincial theatre 
at Blois. As I left the theatre on foot, the 
inhabitants of the town followed me in their 
curiosity, desiring to become acquainted with 
me as an exile rather than in any other char- 
acter. This kind of success, which I owed to 
my misfortunes rather than my talents, annoyed 
the Minister of Police, who wrote, some time 
afterwards, to the Prefect of Loir-et-Cher, that 
I had a Court about me." 

A great blow, however, was impending. The 
last proofs of De V Allemagne were corrected on 
September 23, 18 10. The work had been sub- 
mitted to the Censor, and alterations had been 
introduced in deference to his views ; but Madame 
de Stael, in believing her difficulties to be over- 
come, had reckoned without the police. The 
news was conveyed to her that the Minister of 
Police had caused the whole edition to be seized 
and destroyed, and that she would be required to 
surrender the manuscript and quit her residence 
within four-and-twenty hours. Fortunately, she 
had a copy of the manuscript, and gave up that, 
retaining the original, with the connivance of the 
Prefect charged with the execution of the order, 

248 



The Confiscation of De rAllemagne 

who was a personal friend. She then wrote to 
Rovigo, asking leave to delay her departure for a 
few days. He accorded her a week, but no 
longer, to make her arrangements. 

The objection to the book is said to have been 
that the author wrote of Germany without praising 
either the French Emperor or France. *' Is it to 
be supposed," Rovigo is reported to have said in 
conversation, ** that we have made war in Germany 
for eighteen years in order that a person with a 
well-known name like hers might write a book 
about Germany without mentioning us? The 
author ought to have been sent to Vincennes." 
In his letter, however, he expressly denied that 
the omission of the Emperor's praises was the 
determining cause of his action. " Your banish- 
ment," he wrote, " is a natural consequence of the 
course of conduct which you have consistently 
pursued for several years. . . . We are not yet 
reduced to looking for examples of behaviour 
among the peoples which you admire. Your last 
work is not French in its character ; it was I who 
suppressed it. I regret the loss that your 
publisher will suffer, but it was impossible for me 
to allow the publication." And he concluded : — 

" I have reasons, Madame, for indicating the 
ports of Lorient, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, and 
Rochefort as the only ones at which you will be 
permitted to embark. I beg you to inform me 
which of them you have selected." 

The point of this postscript was that it forbade 
249 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

departure from any of the Channel ports. It was 
suspected that Madame de Stael wanted to go to 
England, and this obstacle was thrown in her way. 
Her sons sought an interview with Napoleon on 
the subject at Fontainebleau, but were met with 
the threat of arrest. She decided, therefore, with 
reluctance to retire to Coppet, where she arrived 
early in October, reflecting upon the degradation 
of a country in which advancement and even re- 
spite from persecution were only to be purchased by 
serving *' the interests of the man who presumes to 
make his own personality the one object to the ad- 
vantagre of which all human endeavour must tend." 
Nor did persecution cease when she reached 
her home. The Prefect of Geneva received 
orders to inform her sons that they would not be 
allowed to return to France without a fresh per- 
mit from the police ; and he was also instructed 
to demand that the proof sheets of De 
r Allemagne should be handed over to him. 
When, on Madame de Stael's refusal to comply 
with his orders, he did not insist, he was removed 
from his office, and a M. Capelle was appointed in 
his place. The new-comer called upon her, and 
suggested that the eulogy of the Emperor would 
be a fitting subject for a pen "worthy of the 
sort of enthusiasm I had displayed in Corinne.'' 
In particular he thought she would be well-advised 
to write an Ode on the birth of the King of Rome. 
" I told him with a laugh," Madame de Stael says, 
"that I had no ideas on the subject, and that all 

250 



Petty Persecutions 

that I could say was that I hoped he would have 
a good foster-nurse." When she went to Aix-les- 
Bains, where Albert de Stael had been ordered to 
take the waters, he sent gendarmes after her to 
order her to return, and gave instructions that 
horses were to be refused to her if she tried to 
travel in any other direction. Schlegel was 
ordered to leave her ; and even the social gaieties 
of Coppet were interrupted. 

*' Madame de Stael," said the Prefect, "is lead- 
ing an agreeable life at home. Her friends, and 
foreigners, come to see her at Coppet. The 
Emperor will not allow that." She gave some 
further theatrical performances, producing two 
comedies of her own composition, entitled Le 
Mannequin and Le Capitaine Kernadec ; but 
most of her old acquaintances were afraid to 
frequent her, and she could write of herself to 
Henri Meister as "living here in a kind of prison, 
at least on the side of France, which makes life 
very painful." Her friends the G^randos passed 
through the neighbourhood without venturing to 
visit her ; and we get an intimate glimpse of the 
condition of thing-s in letters exchangred between 
Rosalie de Constant and her brother Charles, who 
had now come to live at Geneva, and whom 
Madame de Stael invited to dinner. 

"The Stael dinner," writes Charles, "was very 
fine, but I shall not go there again. It was very 
tiring, and the display was enough to make one 
sick." To which Rosalie replied : "All personal 

251 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

considerations apart, I am glad you are not main- 
taining your relations with the famous lady ; such 
relations are very dangerous. I am sure she was 
the cause of the dismissal of the Prefect, and I am 
sure a note is taken of all those who frequent her. 
it is her pride to compromise her friends. . . . 
Every event connected with her makes a noise, 
and, from all I hear, the system of espionage is 
complete." 

That was what the world saw and noted, and 
that is what Madame de Stael relates. A letter, 
however, written to Henri Meister by Madame 
Rilliet-Huber of Geneva, on November 13, 
1 8 10, indicates that her troubles with the police 
did not constitute the whole of life for her, and 
fittingly introduces a fresh phase of the subject. 
She is, we there read, "as lively and brilliant as 
ever " ; and the writer continues : — 

" Madame de Stael has taken an apartment at 
Geneva, where she will take up her residence on 
the 26th. She will shorten her winter by a stay 
of several weeks at Lausanne, where she is to 
meet Benjamin and his wife. This expression 
a7id Ms wife proves to you that Madame de 
Stael's trouble is no longer in that direction, for 
which we must be grateful to Heaven. 

'' It appears (this strictly in confidence) that 
Benjamin repents of his marriage, the fruit of 
annoyance and a transitory passion, and that, if 
he could return to the condition of things of three 
or four years ago — much as he complained of it 
then — he would do so with unspeakable delight. 

252 



A New Lover 

Madame de Stael is too good, and no longer loves 
him enough for his regrets to avenge her. Still, 
she is not heart-broken about it. 

** She has no settled plans for the future, but she 
is bored here." 

There was soon, however, to be relief from 
boredom ; and, in the act of the drama that is to 
follow, we shall find Madame de Stael playing the 
double part that, in the previous act, had been 
played by Benjamin Constant. A new lover had 
come into her life. A second marriage — a 
secret marriage — was, or was soon to be, in 
contemplation. 



253 



CHAPTER XXII 

Madame de Stael makes the acquaintaince of Rocca and secretly 
marries him — Benjamin and his wife arrive at Lausanne — 
Rocca challenges Benjamin, but the duel is avoided — The 
Constants start for Germany — Extracts from Benjamin's 
Journal and letters. 

" I ALWAYS loved my lovers more than they loved 
me in return," is one of Madame de Stael's re- 
ported sayings ; and it remains a fairly true saying 
when certain necessary qualifications have been 
made. 

She is hardly worthy to be called, in the full 
sense of the words, grande mnoureuse. Her dual 
nature restrained her from esteeming the world 
well lost for love for many consecutive hours. 
So far as we have followed her career, we have 
seen her looking upon love far more as a drawing- 
room accomplishment than as an affection of the 
heart. Unless men sighed at her feet, she felt 
not so much unhappy as uneasy ; and when they 
did sigh, her first impulse was to advertise the 
conquest. Nothing could have been more public 
and notorious than the attachment to Benjamin 
Constant, unless it were the attachment to M. de 
Narbonne. Consequently, in engaging her heart 
she also compromised her vanity, and, rather for 
her vanity's than for her heart's sake, clung to 

254 



Albert de Rocca 

retreating lovers with desperate and undignified 
tenacity, yet never mourned for them after she 
had lost them. For love was more to her than 
any particular lover ; and the post of lover was 
merely the most important of the offices in her 
gift, and one which it was her practice to fill as 
soon as ever it became vacant. We have seen 
how M. de Narbonne's coldness was Benjamin 
Constant's opportunity. Benjamin Constant's 
coldness was now, in turn, to prove the oppor- 
tunity of Albert- Michel- Jean de Rocca. 

Rocca was a soldier who had served both in 
Spain and against the British expedition to the 
Isle of Walcheren. At a later date he wrote 
short books on both campaigns. They have 
considerable merit ; and one of them has been 
reprinted in a popular Library of Adventures. 
He had been wounded and left for dead upon 
the field of battle, but saved by a Spanish maiden, 
who declared that he was too handsome to be 
allowed to die. Returning to Geneva to re- 
cuperate, he made love to Madame de Stael in 
his dashing military manner. It is even said 
that he galloped his horse down a long flight 
of stone steps in the Old Town in his haste to 
ride beneath her window, though the people who 
believe that story are not the people who have 
seen the steps in question. It was pointed out 
to him that his mistress was old enough to be 
his mother, — she was, in fact, forty-five, and he 
was only twenty-three, — but he replied that the 

255 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

mention of the word ** mother " only gave him an 
additional motive for loving her. " I will love 
her," he said, "so dearly that she will end by 
marrying me;" while the report of Baron de 
Voght was : "He is fascinated by his relations 
with Madame de Stael, and the tears of his father 
cannot induce him to abandon them." 

Bonstetten, it is true, thought him merely a 
rowdy, and Benjamin Constant thought him 
merely a fire-eater ; but no doubt he boasted his 
two soul sides like the rest of us. At any rate, 
he loved passionately, and did not love in vain, 
though he had to submit to an ignominious 
condition. The marriage, Madame de Stael 
stipulated, must be kept a secret from the world ; 
she must not be required to change her name ; 
her husband must be presented as her paramour, 
even when she bore him children. Rocca was 
sufficiently in love to accept the situation ; and 
the results of her deception were in every way 
satisfactory to Madame de Stael. The world 
had never expected her to be moral, and could 
not say that she was making herself ridiculous. 
The very society which refused to accept Charlotte 
because of her double divorce admitted the sup- 
posed mistress of Albert de Rocca to its most 
exclusive circles. 

The marriage, however, had not yet been con- 
cluded — and one cannot even say for certain how 
far the intimacy had gone — when, in the winter 
of i8:o-i8i I, Benjamin Constant and Charlotte 

256 



Benjamin and Charlotte at Lausanne 

passed through Switzerland on their way to 
Germany, where they were to visit the family of 
the latter. All that we know for certain is that, 
though Benjamin's letters at this period are still 
full of expressions of affection for Charlotte, he 
had by no means forgotten Madame de Stael, 
and that he found Rocca in high favour with 
her, and very ill-disposed towards him. His 
own account of the matter is contained in the so- 
called " Carnet de Benjamin Constant," quoted 
by Sainte-Beuve in his Causeries du Lundi. 
"My head," he writes, "is in a whirl between 
Charlotte and Madame de Stael. I gamble and 
lose twenty thousand francs in a day." And he 
proceeds in short disjointed sentences : — 

"Arrival at Geneva. — My father seizes the 
first pretext for quarrelling with me. — I go to 
Lausanne. — Lausanne's curiosity about Charlotte. 
A combination of ill-will for me, which causes us 
to be badly received, with jealousy of Madame 
de Stael, whom they wish to annoy by receiving 
us well. — Correspondence with my father. — He 
invents a thousand grievances against me, re- 
pudiates his own signature, and goes so far as 
to accuse me of forgery. — Excursions to Geneva 
without Charlotte (February 1811), — Madame de 
Stael takes me back as far as Coppet — the last 
time in my life that I saw Coppet. — Rows with 
my father, with Charlotte, and with Madame de 
Stael. — A miserable life. — Charlotte is not at all 
a success at Lausanne. — Dinner without Charlotte 
with Madame de Stael, at d'Arlens'. — Scenes. — 
R 257 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Last journey to Geneva about my business with 
my father ; we settle everything. — He starts for 
Dole, and, en route, writes me threatening letters, 
in which he withdraws all the results of the 
intervention of M. de Louys. — Agitations with 
Madame de Stael.— She proposes an appoint- 
ment at Rolle. — I dare not accept it for fear of 
Charlotte. — Madame de Stael comes to Lausanne : 
last interview before my departure. — Correspond- 
ence after her return to Coppet. — Rocca repeats his 
proposal to fight a duel.— -My reply. — Departure 
for Germany (May 15, 181 1). — Quite a different 
atmosphere. — No more rows. — Charlotte pleased ; 
no more hostile public opinion. — I resume my 
work. I gamble and lose my money at roulette." 

This is sketchy in manner, and was written too 
long after the event to be depended upon for 
accuracy in detail. The details which can be 
added from the correspondence have no special 
bearing upon this narrative, as they chiefly relate 
to his quarrel with his father about money matters. 
Happily there is no reason to believe that Ben- 
jamin behaved otherwise than well. He had to do 
with a stupid man of choleric disposition, much 
under the influence of a second wife of humble 
birth and mischief-making tendencies ; but he 
made the best of a difficult situation. As regards 
Rocca's challenge, we find a few further particulars 
in a letter from Benjamin's pen printed (in German) 
in Karl Fulda's Chamisson and his Times. 

On April 18, 181 1, it appears, Benjamin was 
258 



Rocca challenges Benjamin 

in Geneva on business with a lawyer. Having 
finished his business, he called on Madame de 
Stael, and remained to dinner. As he was leaving 
the house, M. Rocca met him, bluntly stated that 
he was displeased at the attentions which he 
observed him to be paying to Madame de Stael, 
and proposed that they should fight. The tone 
of the proposal seemed to Benjamin to leave no 
room for explanations. He could not even point 
out, he says, that his alleged "attentions" had 
consisted in calling upon Madame de Stael twice 
in the course of three months, or that his affection 
for his wife and the plans that he was making for 
a long and distant journey were sufiBcient evidence 
that he had no desire to poach upon Rocca's pre- 
serves ; and it was arranged that the hostile meet- 
ing should take place on the Bridge over the 
Arve at nine o'clock on the following morning. 
Writing, therefore, in uncertainty as to the issue 
of an encounter which promises to be desperate, 
he distributes final messages : — 

" I beg my wife's forgiveness for all the trouble 
which I have caused her, and for this last cata- 
strophe, which will be a cause of still greater 
bitterness to her. I beg her on no account to 
believe that I did anything to provoke it. My 
true, deep, and unchangeable love for her was an 
obstacle which prevented any act of gallantry on 
my part towards any other woman. I love no one 
as I love her. She has been an angel to me, and my 
last sentiments are those of Dante for his beloved. 

259 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" I forgive Madame de Stael for the fatality of 
which she will have been the cause, and I do not 
hold her responsible for the savagery of a young 
barbarian. I beg her similarly to pardon me if I 
have, on certain occasions, caused her grief. I 
do not inquire whether I was right or wrong ; 
that I did grieve her is a sufficient cause for my 
repentance. 

" I bequeath all my property without exception 
to my wife. ..." 

The details which follow are of no particular 
importance ; and the chief interest of the letter 
is as a revelation of Benjamin Constant's Mat 
d'dme. He not only wanted to love Charlotte ; 
he loved her. Her love (he still thought) was a 
haven of quiet, safely reached at last after a 
journey across stormy seas. The ties which now 
united him to Madame de Stael were (he believed) 
only of gratitude and obligation. He had yet to 
learn that even of calm there may come satiety, 
and that some memories are apt to reassert 
themselves, even when a man thinks that he has 
lived them down. His love for the one woman, 
and his indifference towards the other, made it 
easier than he had at first thought to avoid the 
unnecessary duel. He had given his proofs, and 
could go further than some men without having 
to fear the charge of cowardice. Consequently 
he could refuse to fight Rocca for much the same 
reasons for which he had refused to fight Auguste 
de Stael. At all events, he did refuse, and, as we 

260 



The Constants start for Germany 

have seen, took his departure from Switzerland 
for Germany on May 15, 181 1, meaning first to 
visit his wife's relatives, and then to settle at 
Gottingen, where the resources of a large library 
would be available for his great work on the 
History of Religions. 

His letters home during the period are those of 
a healthily happy man. His father is libelling 
him and threatening him with lawsuits, but he 
acknowledges no other trouble. Wherever he 
arrives, he is well received ; and he chats lightly 
to Rosalie of the minor incidents of travel. At 
Berne he writes : — 

" My wife was delighted with the beauty of 
the neighbourhood, and I think, if I had wished 
it, she would have been willing to settle there 
with me. She has the excellent quality of always 
feeling with incredible intensity the advantages of 
the present hour — which is a great source of 
happiness for oneself and others." 

At Soleure : — 

" They took us to the Hermitage, which is a 
charming English garden. Formerly there was a 
Hermit there in the full sense of the word. 
Nowadays, the Hermit is a tailor who has been 
dressed up in a monkish garment, and taught to 
fold his arms across his breast and bend his head, 
and who, for the rest, makes clothes, sells beer, 
and receives four pounds of bread, three pounds 
of meat, and ten batzs a week for carrying on the 
trade. I think this gives a fairly accurate im- 
pression of religion at the present time." 

261 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

At Basle :— 

" On arriving here we met the comedians whom 
we had seen at Berne, and sat down to table 
d'hote with them. I began a conversation with 
one of them ; but I was so unfortunate as to 
state that he had played a secondary part in the 
piece in which I had seen him, whereas he had 
played the principal part, and I have never since 
succeeded in re-starting the conversation." 

At Cassel : — 

" In a general way, my position here is rather 
curious. To give you some idea of it, I content 
myself, without entering into details, with telling 
you that my wife's family is entirely composed of 
ministers, superior officers, and favourites of the 
Court of Westphalia, and that it is in the midst of 
them that I pass my life. I am the only one of 
the company who has not a coat with embroidery 
on every seam, three or four straps on the 
shoulders, and three or four orders on the breast." 

Save for the business details, all the letters are 
more or less in that tone of light and cheerful 
persiflage. The name of Madame de Stael is not 
so much as mentioned ; and it is not until we 
turn to the Journal Intime that we discover the 
continuity of the inner life. But then we do see 
that a liaison of fifteen years' duration was not to 
be cancelled by strokes of the pen or farewell 
speeches, but was bound to live in its consequences 
and in its memories. Those memories were 
always waiting for Benjamin — lurking to spring 

262 



At the Gaming-Table 

upon him in his weak moments, and he sought 
escape from them at the gaming-table no less 
than at the desk. Eliminating the inessential, we 
may let the Diary speak. 

"We stay at Baden. Lured on by a gain of 
three louis, I play and lose like a fool." 

"We start for Heidelberg, where I spend the 
day with the young de Loys. Arriving at 
Frankfort, we are overtaken by storms and floods. 
I find a heap of letters, and no bad news in any 
of them — an amazing thing." 

"We stay at Frankfort. They plague me to 
death with the accursed title of Baron. I do not 
cease to gamble, and I do not cease to lose. Let 
us be off." 

"Arrive at Schwalbach, which I find more 
agreeable than Wiesbaden. But it is also a 
worse place for me. I pass ten days without 
doing any work, gambling like a lunatic. Sad 
life! At last we are back at Frankfort, and 
thence we go to Cassel. There we find 
Charlotte's son and her brother. Dinner with 
Furstenstein ; an excellent reception everywhere. 
Dinner with Hardenberg. It is a curious 
position for me — the third husband." 

"Staying at the Hardenberg Castle. Pleasant 
family life. I settle down to work pretty well ; 
but the desire for independence attacks me again, 
and I meditate establishing myself at Gottingen, 
where I take an apartment. ... A letter from 
Madame de Stael. Her position does not get 
any better, and that distresses me. How cruel 

263 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

they are to her ! And that thought attaches me 
to her again. 

" I read my own work in the evening. . . . 
Without this interest in my work, what would 
become of me ? Charlotte is a little cross." 

"To-day, October 25, 181 1, I am forty-four. 
Have I really made a good use of this two-thirds 
of my life ? I must try and do better with the 
end of it. I have a sister-in-law who is dry and 
sharp-tempered — but that is my brother-in-law's 
business. I have been getting on with my work. 
My book makes progress. Charlotte is sweet 
and good. We are packing up to go to Gottingen. 
These horrible removals! I wonder how many 
boxes I have packed in the course of my life ! " 

" Ball till three in the morning. No annoying 
letters to-day ; that is so much time gained. A 
gay supper at our house. Charlotte made herself 
very amiable. A visit from her son. I have been 
reading the Fathers of the Church — a fresh field 
to be gone over." 

" I re-read my novel. How one's impressions 
fade when the circumstances are altered i I could 
not write it again now. I have revised the end, 
which I consider superb. I am persecuted with 
interruptions. Connected work is impossible 
here. 

" Received a silly letter from Madame de Stael. 
She is worth less consideration than I thought." 

" We decide to pass a month at Brunswick. 
What a number of souvenirs I find there, and 
what a number of old friends ! Nevertheless, my 
sadness is profound. I think of my first wife, of 

264 



Frequent Quarrels with Charlotte 

France, of Coppet — the scattered debris of a past 
that is over and done with. And what is my 
present state ? What my future ? My work is 
my only interest in life. I frequently quarrel 
with Charlotte. I should not like to wager that 
we shall end our days together. 

" Dinner and evening party at Giesdorf's. An 
excellent letter from Madame de Stael. Alas ! 
Who knows ? Sharp dispute with Charlotte 
about politics. 

" Supper at Munckhausen's. I have seen my 
first wife again." 



265 



CHAPTER XXIII 

The campaign of persecution at Coppet — Birth of Madame de 
Stael's youngest child — It is boarded out — Madame de Stael 
starts by the only road open to her for England — Vienna — 
Kiev — Moscow — St. Petersburg — Stockholm — Benjamin Con- 
stant at Gottingen — His regrets for Madame de Stael. 

As time passed on, the life at Coppet became 
more and more unbearable, and flight therefrom 
the only, though a very difficult, alternative. The 
few faithful friends who still visited Madame de 
Stael there did so at the risk of punishment. 
Notably Mathieu de Montmorency was banished 
to the interior of France, and Madame Recamier 
was ordered to live at Chalons for showing her 
this proof of affection. Count Elzdar de Sabran, 
drawing on his imagination, wrote warning her 
that worse things were probably in store for her. 
"If you stay," he predicted, "the Emperor will 
treat you like Mary Stuart : nineteen years of 
unhappiness, and tragic catastrophe at the end 
of them." One is not surprised to read the ad- 
mission that relief was sought, not only in literary 
composition, but also in opium. 

The drug, however, was not taken to the point 
of undermining energy ; and the idea of flight 
gained ground, though the act was delayed for 
several months. Various reasons for the delay 

266 



The Flight from Coppet 

are oriven in Dix Annies d'Exil — among others a 
fear lest Napoleon ''should cause to be inserted 
in the newspapers one of those articles which he 
knows how to dictate when he wishes to commit 
moral assassination;" but the true reason is 
probably to be found in her reluctance to face the 
risks of a perilous journey either immediately 
before or immediately after the birth of the child 
which she bore to Rocca. She arranged at last, 
however, to leave the child with a doctor at 
Longirod, in the Jura, and secretly made her 
preparations to depart. 

An application for a passport for America had 
been refused ; so had a request for permission to 
reside at Rome, though preferred by the author 
of Corinne, and supported by a promise not to 
publish even so much as a line of verse. Germany 
was practically a French dependency, and there- 
fore closed to her. There remained England. 
It was for fear lest she should go to England 
that Madame de Stael had been refused a pass- 
port for the United States ; but she might get to 
England by way of Sweden, getting to Sweden 
by way of Russia, and to Russia by way of Austria. 
The Emperor of Austria had been polite to her 
in the past, and would hardly suffer her to be 
molested now. He did not love Napoleon, though 
Napoleon was his son-in-law. These were hypo- 
theses upon which it seemed reasonable to act. 

An exile when compelled to live at Coppet, 
Madame de Stael felt doubly an exile when 

267 f 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

compelled to leave it. So she said her silent 
farewells to whatever reminded her of past days of 
happiness. " I revisited," she says, "my father's 
study, where his chair, his table, and his papers 
remain just as he left them ; I kissed every 
treasured souvenir of his presence ; I carried away 
his cloak, which hitherto I had caused to be left 
lying on his chair, and took it with me that I 
might wrap it round me if the harbinger of death 
drew near." And she tells how she wrote her 
good-byes to her friends, and continues : — 

**On the following day, Saturday, May 23, 
1812, at two o'clock in the afternoon, I got into 
my carriage, saying that I should be back for 
dinner. I took no luo-g-aofe whatsoever with me. 
I carried my fan, and my daughter carried hers, 
and only my son and M. Rocca took the necessaries 
for a few days' travel in their pockets. As we 
drove down the Coppet avenue, leaving the 
chateau which had become, as it were, an old 
friend to me, I nearly fainted." 

And so to a farm near Berne, where it had been 
arranged that Schlegel should meet the party, and 
where, Madame de Stael says, her courage nearly 
abandoned her, and she felt tempted to return 
before the Government realised that she had fled. 
Her children, however, persuaded her to continue, 
and she did so ; her son Auguste returning, after 
procuring her a passport from the Austrian 
Minister, to Coppet, to see that her pecuniary 
interests did not suffer. Albert de Stael, it had 

268 



The Journey continued 

been arranged, was to follow with the servants 
and the baggage, and it was not until he did so 
that the Prefect realised that his prisoner had 
escaped. 

Then the people of Geneva also heard the 
news and talked. For them the interesting fact 
was not that a distinguished authoress had run 
away from Napoleon, but that a distinguished 
neighbour had run away with Rocca. "This 
last proof of the spitefulness of her enemies," 
writes Sismondi to the Comtesse d'Albany, ** has 
annoyed her deeply ; " while she herself writes to 
Madame Recamier : '* More than anyone have I 
experienced slander." But she went on, none the 
less, with her journey, with a mind besieged by 
many other thoughts, and especially by sentiments 
of bitterness towards the Emperor. " What is 
his fatherland?" she asked. "It is the land 
that submits to him. Who are his fellow-citizens ? 
The slaves who obey his orders." And so on, 
without any remarkable adventure, through 
Switzerland, Bavaria, and Tyrol, to Vienna ; 
Rocca, who had quitted her at Berne, having 
rejoined her at Salzburg. 

At Vienna it was necessary to wait for Russian 
passports. The Emperor was at the time at 
Dresden, where Napoleon was entertaining the 
European monarchs before commencing his 
invasion of Russia ; and Madame de Stael's 
reception in his capital was less courteous than 
she had expected. Her disgrace in France being 

269 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

largely due to her laudation of Germany, it was 
difficult to tell her that she ^2S persona ingrata ; 
but spies were, nevertheless, stationed at her 
door, and instructed to follow her whenever she 
walked or drove abroad. There was some 
difficulty, too, about Rocca's status. The marriage 
having been a secret one, Madame de Stael could 
not introduce him as her husband ; and he was 
technically a deserter from the French army, 
whose surrender might be demanded. His 
reception in official circles was, in the circum- 
stances, impossible — a state of things which his 
wife must have found humiliating ; and she was 
naturally relieved when permission was accorded 
to her to start for St. Petersburg by way of Galicia. 
In the Austrian provinces, however, her troubles 
increased. Wherever she arrived, some Jack-in- 
office was there to worry her ; whenever she 
wanted to rest, she was hustled on. In every 
posting-house were placarded the Government's 
instructions to the police to keep an eye on her — 
a publication of its intentions which reminded her 
of M. de Sartines' proposal that spies should be 
dressed in uniform. There was a time when 
hysteria overcame her, and it was necessary to 
take her out of her carriage, lay her down on the 
roadside, and dash water in her face. There 
was even a time when a commissary of police 
told her son that, if he carried out his instructions 
to the letter, he would have to insist on sleeping 
in her bedroom ; to which the fiery Albert re- 

270 



In Russian Territory 

plied that, if the commissary did insist, he would 
find himself pitched out of window. And so on 
until the Russian frontier was safely crossed on 
July 14, 1 81 2 — the twenty-third anniversary of the 
fall of the Bastille. The first man to receive her in 
Russian territory, she says, was an exiled French- 
man who had once been a clerk in Necker's bank. 
The Grand Army was already invading ; and 
the direct route to St. Petersburg being already 
barred, it was necessary to make a detour by way 
of Moscow, and to be quick, lest that route should 
be barred also. In Volhynia — the first Russian 
province which she entered — she was warned 
that the French were only a week's march behind 
her. There was quite a chance that she might 
find herself driven to travel to her destination 
by way of Odessa and Constantinople. " I con- 
soled myself," she writes, " by thinking of a poem 
on Richard Coeur-de-Lion which I intend to write 
if my health and my life permit me." In the 
meantime, she pressed on to Kiev, where she was 
"overwhelmed with amiable cares," and invited 
to a ball which she had no time to attend, by 
General Miloradovitsch, and thence took the 
road to Moscow. Her trouble there was to 
procure horses. Most of those available had 
been requisitioned for the war ; and once again 
it seemed likely that the Grand Army would over- 
take the fugitive, and make her look ridiculous. 
Horses were found, however, and the welcome 
at Tula was such as to restore self-respect : 

271 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" Several gentlemen of the vicinity came to my 
inn to compliment me on my writings, and the 
wife of the Governor received me with sherbet 
and roses, in the Asiatic fashion." And so on 
to the capital. 

The monotony of the intervening scenery 
haunted Madame de Stael *'like certain meta- 
physical conceptions of which the mind cannot 
divest itself when once it has laid hold of them." 
To relieve her imagination, she askej^ the peasant 
women to dance for her, and remarked the 
** modest voluptuousness " of their movements. 
In due course, however, the gilded cupolas 
appeared in sight. The party had gained on 
the Grand Army and was a month ahead of it. 
There was time to see the Kremlin and to be 
entertained by the notables of the city before 
departing by way of Novgorod to St. Petersburg, 
where, we read, " I saw the English flag, the 
emblem of liberty, flying on the Neva, and felt 
that, by embarking on the ocean, I might place 
myself under the immediate protection of Divine 
Providence." 

Again, at St. Petersburg, Madame de Stael 
was well received and nobly entertained. " The 
principles of morality," she discovered, "were not 
yet firmly fixed in the heads of the Russians." 
As a consequence, her intimacy with Rocca raised 
no awkward questions ; and the honours shown 
to her are a proof of the importance attached to 
Napoleon's victim outside the range of Napoleon's 

272 



Honoured at St. Petersburg 

jurisdiction. Orloff invited her to dinner in his 
island on the Neva, and Narishkin, the Chamber- 
lain, entertained her at his country seat. She 
read aloud selected chapters of the suppressed 
work on Germany, and Stein sought and obtained 
permission to make copies of them to send to 
his wife. Suvaroff received her on the eve of his 
departure for the war which Barclay de Tolly — 
the Muscovite Cunctator — had already won for 
him ; and, uynless her narrative is making an 
undue use of metaphor, she kissed him before 
she let him go. When she went over a girls' 
school conducted under Imperial patronage, one 
of the pupils was put forward to recite passages 
from her father's Cours de morale religieuse. 
She was presented to the Empress ; and the 
Emperor Alexander presented himself, and 
apologised for his autocratic status. A good 
despot, he admitted, he might be ; but, even so, 
he was "only a happy accident." 

There was a temptation to remain, but time 
was flying, and, as the September days elapsed, 
the usual signs heralded the coming of the winter. 
On the day of her visit to Tsarskoe Selo, Madame 
de Stael noticed that the flowers of the South 
were blown upon by the winds of the North ; 
and she made up her mind to depart by way 
of Finland. Practically the whole diplomatic 
corps, she tells us, came to see her off, and she 
took ship at Abo, and, in spite of her fear of the 
sea, arrived safely at Stockholm, where she passed 
s 273 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

eight months, mainly occupied in the composition 
of that Dix Annies d'Exil from which this 
narrative of her adventures has been extracted. 
It was during those eight months that the Grand 
Army was destroyed, and that the European 
coaHtion by which Napoleon's power was ultimately 
broken was formed. 

Benjamin Constant, in the meantime, was 
sitting at Gottingen, bored to death, and in his 
boredom thinking of Madame de Stael, and 
regretting her. 

First it was his business relations with her 
that were complicated, as he tells his aunt, by 
the risks of a lawsuit brought against him by 
his father. He owed her money — an uncertain 
amount, impossible to calculate exactly — and she 
had refused to take it from him. In the end, 
after much debate, a sum had been agreed upon 
which was to be paid to her out of his estate on 
his death. The unexpected lawsuit raised a doubt 
whether he would be able to carry out this 
undertaking; but his father's sudden death 
removed the difficulty, and enabled sentimental 
considerations once more to assume the upper 
hand. 

"The lovers, though they were both married 
and not rightly to be classed as lovers any longer, 
continued to correspond. Most of the corre- 
spondence is lost ; but we have one of Madame de 
Stael's letters — a letter which she presumably did 
not show to Rocca — from which we gather that 

274 



Spiritual Loneliness 

Rocca's love had not sufficed to teach her to 
forget. Two years have elapsed, she reminds 
Benjamin, since she has seen him, and two 
months since she has had news of him. What 
is to become of her in her spiritual loneliness? 
With whom is she to talk, and how to exist on 
her own resources? She has kept his letters. 
She looks at them whenever she opens her desk, 
though the handwriting makes her tremble. And 
she concludes : — 

" My father and you and Mathieu share a 
part of my heart that is eternally closed. There 
I continually suffer, and always in a new way. I 
live in the past, and were I about to be 
swallowed up by the waves, my voice would 
utter these three names — one of which only was 
harmful to me. Is it possible that you brought 
such ruin ? that such despair as mine could 
not restrain you? No, you are guilty, and only 
your admirable intellect can cause me any further 
illusions. Farewell, farewell ! You cannot under- 
stand what I suffer." 

Yet perhaps he did understand, for he was 
suffering also. He observes that "Charlotte's 
character is changing." He hears that Madame 
de Stael is ill, and talks of going alone to Switzer- 
land. "Why," he asks, "did I marry again? It 
is a silly situation, and a silly chain. Formerly 
I was swept along by a torrent. Nowadays, I 
succumb beneath the weight of a burden." 
Then there comes news, incomplete and in- 

275 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

accurate, apparently, of Madame de Stael's 
departure from Coppet, and the entry in the 
Diary is as follows : — 

" Madame de Stael is travelling with Rocca, 
but she no longer writes to me. The recollection 
of her and of Albertine tears my heart to pieces. 
My heart tires of everything that it possesses, 
and regrets everything that it has lost. Perhaps, 
in the end, the sweetness and gentleness of 
Charlotte will overcome this impression. How 
sad is life, and what a fool I am ! I make my 
plans for a journey to Vienna, and am reminded 
of the efforts Madame de Stael made to drag me 
there with her. As a consequence I am thinking 
of making with Charlotte the expedition which I 
refused to make with the most intelligent of 
women for my companion. God's justice ! It 
is a singular series of follies which has caused 
me, in order to avoid leaving Paris, to con- 
tract a marriage which has stranded me at 
Gottingen." 

There follow quarrels with Charlotte, alternated 
by reconciliations, and recognitions of her great 
though placid merit. 

" I have the nuisance of moving again. What 
an inconvenience a wife is ! A lively scene with 
Charlotte. She was really in the wrong, but I 
am always so in form. I recognise that there 
is good in Charlotte. . . . She has a mania for 
sitting up late, which causes me to pass abomin- 
ably bad nights. And, remember, I got married 
in order that I might go to bed early. This sort 



of thing cannot last." 



276 



" An Unarrangeable Life " 

Then the names of Madame de Stael and 
Charlotte figure side by side in the same day's 
entry. 

"Charlotte is sweet and good. I conjure up 
chimseras, and blame others for the follies of 
my own mind. Fundamentally Charlotte is just 
like all women. I have accused individuals 
when I should have blamed the sex. But for 
my work, and for the good advice that I need, 
I miss Madame de Stael more than ever. 

" Profound sadness ; discontent with myself and 
others. The two things always go together." 

" A letter from Madame de Stael which proves 
to me that all is indeed over between us. So 
be it ! It is my own doing. And now let me 
steer my course through life alone, and not let 
myself be any more eriibarrassed by ties which 
offer less charm than did the old ones." 

" I work little and badly. How I lose my time ! 
What an unarrangeable life ! 

*' Fresh scenes with Charlotte, but I feel that 
they are of my own making. Instead of being 
weak and hard, I ought to be firm and gentle. 
I feel that I bear the burden of my wife's bore- 
dom and of my own as well ; it is very heavy. I 
have lost Madame de Stael, and I shall never 
recover from the blow." 

" Charlotte is back from a visit to Cassel. A 
long conversation on the inconvenience of divers 
things. But there is nothing to make such a 
talk about. The one actual inconvenience of my 
life is that I am married. Georges Dandin ! 

277 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" On such a day as this, at eleven o'clock in the 
morning, on the staircase of the Hotel de la 
Couronne, at Lausanne, I parted from Madame 
de Stael, who said that she thought we should 
never see each other again. It looks like it. 
Alas ! Dear Albertine ! 

"All the evening my mind was full of recol- 
lections and regrets. I think as much of Madame 
de Stael as I did ten years ago. And yet 
Charlotte overwhelms me with kindness." 

" I work, and, from the moral point of view, 
am not so bad as I was. Still, I must cease 
eating my heart out, must accept my position, 
and make the best of it. I did a silly thing to 
break, at a time when it might have served me, 
a tie which I had preserved and endured while 
it injured me. I regret it ; I was a fool. And 
what now ? I must profit by what I have done 
instead of suffering. Nothing is quite lost. 
Much remains to me — more than I deserve. 
Charlotte will do what I wish. Let me then 
employ my talents, and behave reasonably 
instead of like a lunatic. Let me make Charlotte 
happy. I have done harm enough in my life." 



278 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Madame de Stael arrives in London — Murray the bookseller 
publishes De VAllemagne — The qualities and defects of the 
book. 

Towards the end of June 1813, Madame de 
Stael arrived in London. Her first engagement 
was to attend one of Lady Jersey's receptions. 
A day or two later, " Murray the bookseller," as 
Crabb Robinson calls him, waited upon her with 
proposals for the publication of De V Allemagne. 
His offer of fifteen hundred guineas was accepted ; 
and Crabb Robinson, who was present at the 
interview, assisted in drawing up the agreement. 
Sent at once to the printers, the work appeared 
in the following October, and was instantly and 
immensely successful, alike with the public and 
with the critics. The first edition was exhausted 
in a few days ; and the Edinburgh Review pro- 
claimed its author the greatest literary genius of 
her time — a piece of nonsense thoroughly worthy 
of the critical organ which declared that Words- 
worth's poetry would " never do." 

The idea, indeed, seems to have prevailed for 
a period that Madame de Stael had discovered 
Germany, and was the only critic, whether 
EnHish or French, who had studied German 

279 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

literature and understood German philosophy. 
And that too was nonsense. The Sorrows of 
Wertker had not only been read, but had even 
been imitated by the sentimental youth of France 
before the Revolution — not only by Ramond de 
Carbonniere, in his Dernieres Aventures dujeune 
Olbon, but also by Madame de Stael herself in her 
very earliest essays in fiction. German philosophy 
had been introduced to French readers not by her, 
but by her friend and compatriot Villers, the trans- 
lator of the works of Kant. In England there was 
Scott who had translated Burger's ballads, and 
Coleridge who was steeped in the German erudition 
with which Madame de Stael was merely sprinkled ; 
and the superiority of the latter authority probably 
transpired when the two authors met. That, at 
any rate, seems the most reasonable interpretation 
of Madame de Stael's well-known remark, that 
Coleridge was admirable at monologue but had 
no idea of duologue. He felt doubtless, when 
German subjects came to the front, that he had 
nothing to learn but much to teach, and spoke, 
therefore, as the master addressing the disciple. 
It was a breach of manners, but the temptation 
to commit it must have been strong. 

Another article of faith with the critics of the 
period was that Madame de Stael's intellect was 
of the distinctively masculine type. She certainly 
exercised her mind on topics of which men, at 
that date, usually monopolised the discussion. 
Perhaps she even tried to discuss them after the 

280 



The Feminine Point of View 

manner of a man ; but in this she did not succeed. 
To say that the feminine point of view "keeps 
breaking in " would be to understate the case. 
Whether she is dealing with politics or with philo- 
sophy, the feminine point of view obtrudes itself on 
almost every page. Only a woman's blind affection 
could have made the career of Necker the pivot of 
the history of revolutionary France ; only a woman 
could have qualified one of Kant's great generalisa- 
tions with the words, " Pour les ames sensibles." 

The truth is that, in so far as Madame de 
Stael wrote like a man, she wrote badly, not 
thinking for herself, but reproducing what men 
had told her. We have seen how she padded 
Corinne with art criticisms which Schlegel 
practically dictated. De V Allemagne- is full of 
moral and metaphysical philosophy derived from 
the same source. As a disquisition it has about 
as much importance as an undergraduate's notes 
of a lecture to which he has just listened. A 
good deal of the lecture is no doubt accurately 
transcribed ; much of the exposition of Kantianism, 
for instance, may pass as a popular version of 
the system. But the criticisms passed upon the 
system, being sentimental and not philosophic, 
show that its principles have not really been 
grasped. The feminine point of view, in short, 
breaks in and reminds the reader of the question 
which Crabb Robinson addressed to Madame de 
Stael at Weimar : " Madame, je me demande si 
vous avez compris le veritable sens des mots." 

281 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

In looking for the merits of the book, therefore, 
we must give up the philosophy. 

To a large extent, too, we must give up the 
politics. Madame de Stael had a keen eye for 
the obvious and the actual, but very little power 
of perceiving a latent tendency. The provincialism 
— one might almost say the parochialism — of 
Germany leapt to her eyes. It was a country 
without a capital — consequently without any single 
literary or artistic centre dictating laws of taste. 
Patriotism, in the French and English sense of 
the word, was lacking, and so were men of action. 
It was only in speculation that the German genius 
was remarkable. 

That was the superficial view of Germany 
which almost any observer would have felt 
warranted in taking at the time when Madame 
de Stael visited Weimar and Berlin ; but much 
had happened since then, and, to the discerning, 
certain potentialities had been revealed. The 
stricken field of Jena had awakened a good many 
Germans from their dogmatic slumbers ; the 
lesson of defeat had been learnt. Stein had set 
to work to re-organise the Prussian army ; Korner 
had sung his patriotic songs ; the spirit of Pan- 
germanism had begun to stir, and was soon to find 
its visible expression in the battle of the nations 
at Leipzig. But Pangermanism was a develop- 
ment which Madame de Stael did not foresee. 
Judged by that test, again her work must be con- 
demned as wanting in vision. 

282 



Unflattering Picture of Germany 

In truth, her real interests were not in either 
metaphysical or political philosophy. When she 
wrote of such matters, she wrote as one giving a 
performance for which she had been carefully 
coached. The personalities of politics were 
always more to her than its principles ; and her 
utterances were spontaneous, original, and acute 
only when she discussed social and sentimental 
questions : the rights and wrongs of her sex, the 
manners and tone of good society, love, happiness, 
marriage, and divorce. It is mainly, if not 
entirely, in relation to these questions that her 
picture of Germany is valuable. 

For what reason the French censor found her 
remarks on these matters objectionable it is 
difficult at this date to see. The picture decidedly 
is not one that vain Germans would be likely to 
regard as flattering. Though they are credited 
with solid qualities, they are denied all the graces 
which make life agreeable. Their powers of con- 
versation are held up to ridicule and contempt. 
Talk, as distinguished from argument, is, Madame 
de Stael maintains, impossible in a language 
in which an unfinished sentence conveys no 
meaning because the verb which gives the key 
to the mystery has to be held in reserve. Social 
intercourse, it is added, is made barbarous by the 
rigidity of German etiquette. " Everyone is kept 
in his place as if it were the post of duty ; " 
whereas, in France, the salon had anticipated the 
career in being open to the talents. The good 

283 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

manners of the upper classes, in so far as these 
are to be described as good, are by no means 
diffused through the community ; the mercantile 
classes are ignorant and coarse. And so forth, 
till the impartial reader gathers the impression 
that the German rather than the French censor 
was the proper functionary to take offence. 

On these matters, however, Madame de Stael 
writes with a gusto which is still entertaining 
because her comments are still largely true. She 
holds our attention because she is not lecturing 
but sounding the personal note ; and she sounds 
that note even more emphatically when she treats 
of sentimental themes. Nothing is more character- 
istic than her insertion, in the midst of her examina- 
tion of the various German systems of Ethics, of 
a chapter entitled " De I'amour dans le mariage." 
It was a subject on which she had begun to think 
before she was married, and which continued to 
haunt her long after she was left a widow, though 
one suspects that the word " marriage " became a 
form of speech employed to describe her relations 
not with her husband but with her lovers. 

*' In an unhappy marriage," she bursts out, 
" there is a violence of distress surpassing all 
other sufferlno's in the world. A woman's whole 
soul depends upon the conjugal tie. To struggle 
against fate alone, to journey to the grave with- 
out a friend to support you or to regret you, is an 
isolation of which the deserts of Arabia give but 
a faint and feeble idea ; and when all the treasure 

284 



Sorrowful News 

of your youth has been given in vain, when you 
can no longer hope that the reflection of these 
first rays will shine upon the end of your life, 
when there is nothing in the dusk to remind you 
of the dawn, and when the twilight is pale and 
colourless as a livid spectre that precedes the night, 
your heart revolts, and you feel that you have 
been robbed of the gifts of God upon earth." 

A passionate complaint truly, and one which 
perhaps comes strangely from the woman who 
had deserted her first husband for M. de Narbonne, 
and while living with her second husband con- 
tinued to write love letters to Benjamin Constant ! 
And yet, in a sense, absolutely sincere, being, as 
it were, a summary of all the wrongs which she 
had suffered at the hands of all her lovers ! 

To those who met Madame de Stael in London, 
however, it may well have appeared that, what- 
ever her.griefs, she suffered chiefly on paper. Two 
items of sorrowful news reached her. She heard 
of the death of her second son, Albert, whose 
head was actually sliced off in a duel with a 
Cossack officer ; and she also heard of the death 
of her first lover, M. de Narbonne, from typhus 
fever contracted in a garrison town. But she 
was none the less delighted to be the lion of the 
season, succeeding in that character to Maria 
Edgeworth, who had succeeded to Lord Byron. 
Miss Berry met her at dinner on the evening of 
the day on which the news of Narbonne's death 
had arrived. "One must acknowledge," is the 

285 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

sardonic comment in her Journal, "that one could 
not lose an old lover more gaily, as it was said 
of Charles the Seventh of his kingdom." 

Her losses certainly kept her in seclusion no 
more than did her daughter's attack of the 
measles. Society was circumscribed in those days. 
Within its limits she went everywhere and met 
everybody, straying occasionally beyond its limits 
to meet the men and women of letters whom the 
circle did not include. All the memoirs, diaries, 
and letters of the period are full of her name ; 
the commentators are unanimous in paying tribute 
to the copious eloquence of her conversation. 
" She talks folios," is Byron's verdict ; and the 
references to her in Miss Berry's Journal are mostly 
to the same effect. " Madame de Stael," she says, 
" came, talked, questioned, and went away again 
like a flash of lightning, or rather like a torrent ; " 
and she writes, about a month later, to Sir William 
Gell : "You have just come in time to save 
Madame de Stael's life, who certainly would have 
^(7^;'^^ herself to death in another week." Similarly, 
to Lady Hardwicke, who complains that she has lost 
her voice, she offers the consolation that "there 
cannot certainly be a more convenient visitor to 
a dumb woman than Madame de Stael ; " while a 
letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth contains the 
remark : " The Stael left Richmond much about 
the same time that we left Twickenham, and 
wherever she is, there will society be also — if it is 
to be had within ten miles a la ronde. Except 

286 



Social Triumphs 

during her visit to Bowood, and now that she is 
for a week at Middleton, she has been constantly 
in town, giving very agreeable dinners and soirees, 
with two or three women and half a dozen men — 
dont elU se charge toute seule." 

The list of the eminent personages whose 
acquaintance Madame de Stael made or renewed 
might easily be extended to fill several pages. 
She entered society through one door with Lady 
Jersey and through another door with Sir James 
Mackintosh and Crabb Robinson. At Sir Hum- 
phry Davy's house she dined with Sheridan, 
Whitbread, and Grattan. Visiting Lord Lans- 
downe's country seat, she met Etienne Dumont 
and Sir Samuel Romilly. As she was anxious to 
know Godwin, a part)'' was arranged for the pur- 
pose. Lord Liverpool entertained her. The 
Duchess of Devonshire took her to pay a call in 
her barouche, and she "related for nearly an hour 
the works that she thought of writing. " S he is more 
than once accused of " monopolising " Curran ; 
and Coleridge, as we have seen, compelled her to 
listen to him. Byron took a journey of sixty 
miles in order to be presented, and relates that 
"she justified what I had heard," but "was still 
a mortal and made long speeches," adding that 
she preached politics to the politicians, and that 
"the sovereign himself was not exempt from this 
flow of eloquence." Other names which one 
meets in the various chronicles of her sojourn 
are those of the Dukes of Sussex and Gloucester, 

287 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Lords Stafford and Harrowby, Lady Holland, 
Wilberforce, Brougham, Malthus, Rogers, whom 
she ranked next to Scott among the English 
poets of the day, Croker of the Quarterly, and 
Bowles, the parson sonnetteer. The most jealous 
of her enemies could not have denied the com- 
pleteness of her social triumph. 

Nor was it in society alone that her personality 
made its impression. Its influence was exerted 
through her books no less than through her 
conversation ; and Crabb Robinson tells a striking 
story of the case of the daughter of a country 
clergyman, whose perusal of a translation of 
Delphine and Corinne " so powerfully affected her 
in her secluded life as quite to turn her brain." 
The young woman wrote to the author, asking 
to be allowed to become her amanuensis, and, 
not satisfied with the formal refusal of her 
services conveyed through a private secretary, 
found a means of being presented. She threw 
herself at Madame de Stael's feet, and repeated 
her request, but was admonished on the folly 
of her desire. " Domestic life," Madame de Stael 
assured her, " affords more permanent happiness 
than any that fame can give. You have a father — 
I have none. You have a home — I was led to travel 
because I was driven from mine. Be content with 
your lot; if you knew mine, you would not desire it." 

With these words the petitioner was dismissed. 
" The cure," Crabb Robinson solemnly adds, 
"was complete. The young woman returned 

288 



Still Bound by Sentimental Chains 

to her father, became more steadily industrious, 
and, without ever speaking of her adventure with 
Madame de Stael, silently profited by it. She 
is now," he concludes, "living a life of great 
respectability, and her friends consider that her 
cure was wrought by the only hand by which 
it could have been effected." 

Evidently Madame de Stael's days throughout 
that London season and for some months after- 
wards were well filled. How far she enjoyed 
the gaieties in which she participated, and how 
far she merely sought in them deception and escape 
from the disappointments of the realities, one 
dares not venture to decide. All that one can 
say with absolute certainty is that, in the midst 
of her dissipations and her studie.^;% Madame 
de Stael did not quite shake herself 'free from 
the sentimental chains that bound her, She 
moved in a blaze of social success and literary 
glory ; she was storing up knowledge for the 
purpose of writing a great work on the British 
Constitution — a work which she is said to have 
asked Murray to commission for a fee of . six 
thousand guineas. She was attended by her 
husband, whom it was her duty as well as her 
privilege to love. But, even so, Benjamin Con- 
stant, to whom she had meant to say farewell 
for ever, was never for long out of her thoughts. 
She had said her last good-byes to him, as she sup- 
posed, in November 1812 ; and already, in August 
1 81 3, she was corresponding with him again. 
T 289 



CHAPTER XXV 

Benjamin Constant at Gottingen — His intrigue on behalf of the 
Crown Prince of Sweden — It comes to nothing, and he goes to 
Paris — Madame de Stael's letters to him — Rocca is not to be 
" a hindrance " — Napoleon having abdicated, Madame de Stael 
goes to Paris. 

At the time when Madame de Stael was the 
flashing comet of a London season, Benjamin 
Constant was boring himself to extinction in 
small German towns, dining, as we have seen, 
" with all the Hardenbergs in the world," over- 
whelmed rather than sustained by the sweetness 
and goodness of Charlotte. He knew nothing 
of the marriage with Rocca, whom he supposed 
merely to have succeeded to his own post as 
lover. "H61as! chere Albertine!" had been the 
exclamation wrung from him by the farewell 
letter ; and then he turned to seek such con- 
solation as he could derive from his social 
environment and his book about Religion. 

One of his neighbours was his first wife, but 
his heart did not go back to her ; he merely 
remarks, in his letters, upon the curious tastes 
which she has developed with the years. " She 
keeps," he writes to his aunt, "one hundred and 
twenty birds, two squirrels, thirty-six cats, eight 
dogs, and a number of other miscellaneous 

290 



Benjamin Constant at Gottingen 

animals. They all live in a large apartment 
adjoining her bedroom, and she has to employ 
three women to keep the menagerie in a state 
of passable cleanliness. Besides this, the small 
boys of the town amuse themselves by throwing 
all the stray cats and dogs they can find into her 
garden, and she takes care of them all until she 
can find a home for them." 

Another letter of about the same date contains 
an interesting comment on some amorous intrigue 
of no special importance of which he has heard. 
"What strikes me in this story," he remarks, 
**is the utter failure of great public events to 
disturb our social and conjugal habits. The world 
is on fire ; men kill and ruin one another. All the 
nations are threatened, and all the individuals are 
trying their best to keep afloat in the midst of the 
general shipwreck ; and yet women still find time to 
be unfaithful to their husbands, and — what is more 
remarkable — the husbands find time to be jealous." 

The book is also mentioned. One day the 
author worked at it from six o'clock in the 
morning until six o'clock at night. But little 
progress is made, and the blam.e is thrown upon 
the Gottingen Library. It "is Hke an ocean in 
which one loses oneself. Hardly have I read 
what seems indispensable for my purpose, than I 
discover something which it is still more indispen- 
sable to read. If I stayed here for twenty years I 
should be no farther on than I am to-day." All 
the letters, in short, are the letters of a man who 

291 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

is eating his heart out with boredom — who feels 
more and more the need of active occupation. 

Presently the active occupation was found. 
The end of Napoleon's dominion was clearly at 
hand. Benjamin's letters trace the course of his 
downfall in the form of an allegory, designed to 
deceive the censor. The Emperor is referred to 
as Jacqueline, and his battles are called lawsuits. 
Jacqueline is losing her cases, and is likely to be 
sent home to her village. Napoleon, that is to say, 
is losing his battles, and will have to abdicate. And 
what then ? It is not at all certain that a Bourbon 
Restoration will be acceptable to France. There 
is room, at all events, for an alternative intrigue. 

So an intrigue was set on foot — a poor little 
intrigue, of which the historians hardly take cognis- 
ance, and about which we find little information 
elsewhere than in \}i\^ Journal I ntivte. From this, 
however, we gather that Bernadotte, now the 
Crown Prince of Sweden, thought that it might 
be possible to secure the succession to the French 
throne for himself or his son, and that Benjamin 
Constant was asked, and consented, to help. He 
hesitated, it is true. " I must not forget," he 
writes, "the natural timidity of my disposition, 
and I must not act like a lunatic to console myself 
for having- acted like a fool." But the hesitation 
was overcome, and Charlotte raised no objections, 
but was willing to stay quietly at home while her 
husband went forth in pursuit of adventures. 

The language in which the Diary deals with 
292 



Collapse of the Swedish Intrigue 

the matter is rather cryptic. The Swedish Prince 
figures there as " Le Bearnais," the Bernadotte 
family belonging to the department of B^arn. 
He came to see Benjamin, and invited him to 
dinner, showed him some '' very propitious " letters, 
made a further appointment, and departed. " Our 
plans," notes Benjamin, "are developing;" but 
he adds : " I must make haste if I am to be in at 
the death." The Prince confers upon him the 
Order of the Polar Star — "which gives me 
pleasure ; " and then he travels night and day to 
meet the Prince at Liege, where all his promising 
schemes collapse, as he relates in enigmatic sen- 
tences. When he tries to see the Prince, he 
hears that he is ill, and perceives that the Prince's 
attendants are putting obstacles in his way. The 
Prince makes a speech to the French prisoners, 
and is not well received. Events meanwhile are 
moving fast : Talleyrand is active ; Louis xviii. 
is proclaimed; and the Bearnais returns to Paris 
without even having set foot in France. But 
Benjamin goes on to Paris, accompanied by 
Auguste de Stael, whom he has picked up at 
Louvain, leaving his wife in Germany. 

That is the whole history of the Swedish 
intrigue ; and there has rarely been an intrigue 
more foolish and futile. Madame de Stael, 
however, heard of it, and was interested, and it 
was indirectly the cause of the renewal of her 
relations with her lover. A letter to Schlegel 
shows how closely she was watching events. 

293 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

"What," she asks, "is Benjamin about, and is 
your Prince making use of him? He owes me 
something for the zeal with which I sing his praises 
and defend him against the envy of others." And 
at the same time she was exchanging letters with 
Benjamin himself. One of his letters to her is de- 
scribed as being " more passionate than in the days 
when he loved me most ; " and if we had the whole 
correspondence before us, we should probably be 
able to say the same of some of her letters to him. 
A few of the letters were printed, long ago, in 
Strodtmann's Dickter-profile und Character-kopfe ; 
others were quite recently published by permission 
of the Baroness de Nolde, great-granddaughter^ 
of Madame de Constant, in the American Critic. 
They contain a few, but not very many, political 
allusions. We read, for instance, that Lord 
Liverpool considered the Swedish Prince's ad- 
dress to the French, of which he had seen a 
draft, "the finest thing that he had seen in his 
life." There is talk, too, about books and 
publishers. We read of the great success of De 
V Allemagne, and Madame de Stael offers to 
arrange with Murray for an English edition 
of the much - talked - of work on Religions. 
Albertine's name also occurs again and again. 
Benjamin, we infer, never wrote without sending 
the child an affectionate messag-e which called for 
a reply. But the chief note of the letters was 
that of lamentation for lost happiness. 

. ^ By her first husband. 
294 



Lamentation for Lost Happiness 

"Benjamin," we read in one of them, "you 
have destroyed my life ! For ten years no day 
has gone by without suffering on your account. 
How I loved you! Let us leave all that alone, 
as it is so cruel — and yet I shall never be able to 
forgive you, as I have never ceased to suffer. 
. . . Our life is as a house built on the sand and 
full of weariness — nothing but sorrow endures." 

Another striking passage is : "I do not wish 
to die without seeing you again, without having 
spoken to you as I used to speak ; but I should 
wish to die after, because you have hurt me to the 
depths of my soul, and you will wound me again. 
Adieu, adieu, I am always as I have been, and 
you can still tell yourself that I have shed tears 
only on the death of my unfortunate child and on 
your letters ; the rest is a cloud, but real life is pain." 

In one of the letters Madame de Stael writes 
that she is in very poor health, and may die at 
any time. One may suspect the appeal ad 
misericordiam, but the same report reached her 
friends at Geneva. "Her stomach gets worse 
and worse every day," writes Madame Rilliet- 
Huber to Henri Meister at a date at which 
we know her to have been dining out almost daily. 
Indisposition, however, by no means diverted her 
thoughts from her old lover. She invited not only 
him but his wife to visit her, promising that " I shall 
in no wise accuse her of what I found it too cruel to 
accuse you of yourself in former days. " She assured 
him at the same time that he might renew his rela- 
tions with her without fear of the wrath of Rocca. 

295 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" M. de Rocca will behave to you as he does to 
M. de Montmorency. Our mutual attachment is 
formed for life ; he helped me in my misfortune 
with such noble courage and such tenderness of 
heart that I shall never forget it. He has become 
another being, and you will recognise neither his 
manners nor his conversation. Do not, then, 
think of him as a hindrance. . . . It is not for a 
week, but for life, that we should settle in the 
same place ; but will you do it ? " 

Thus, in these fragments of a striking corre- 
spondence, we see Madame de Stael form her 
plans. She is strong enough, she thinks, to tear 
her way through entanglements — clever enough 
to thrid the mazes of the most complicated senti- 
mental situations. Since she means well, nothing 
that she does can be wrong. She will be equally 
kind to all her lovers, reckoning her husband as 
one of them. They shall form a happy family, 
taking it in turns to enjoy the greater share of her 
favours and the chief place in her regard. For 
the time being Rocca must give way to Benjamin ; 
he is good and amenable, and he will not mind. 

The course of public events, as it happened, 
was favourable to her purpose. The Allies had 
beaten Napoleon at Leipzig ; they had outflanked 
him and marched round him in the French cam- 
paign of the early months of 1814 ; they were in 
Paris, and it was open to the exiles to return. 
Madame de Stael would doubtless have returned 
in any case. She who, sitting by the blue waters 

296 



The Return to Paris 

of Lake Leman, had sighed for the gutter of 
the Rue du Bac, could not conceivably have 
resisted that temptation. Considerations of 
business as well as of pleasure drew her thither ; 
for now that the Emperor had abdicated, there 
was more than a chance that the debt of the 
French Treasury to Necker might be paid. 
Above all, however, the lover to whom she had 
said so many last good-byes was there ; and she 
felt that she must hasten to him, even as, long 
ago, in the days of her youth, she had hastened 
to Mickleham to meet M. de Narbonne. 

" She made me some extraordinary con- 
fidences," says Miss Berry, who continued to 
see her frequently until her departure. We do 
not know what the confidences were, but we can 
guess, for though Madame de Stael concealed 
her marriage, she never made a mystery of her 
love affairs. Miss Berry, we gather, did not 
take the confessions very seriously. " Emotion," 
she says, "is not what she excites nor what she 
feels except momentarily. She does not dwell 
long enough upon anything ; life, characters, and 
even feelings pass before her eyes like a magic 
lantern. She spends herself upon paper, and 
runs through the world to see all, to hear all, and 
to say all — to excite herself, and to give it all 
back to the world, and to the society from whence 
she has drawn it." " Now she is gone," she adds 
in a letter, "while / am regretting her, she will 
never think more of me until we meet again." 

297 ..^- 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Perhaps not. Her mind, as we have seen, 
was occupied with more engrossing thoughts. 
She expected much, though, as the event proved, 
disappointment was in store for her. 

It may be that her rich imagination had 
coloured that letter in which she told Schlegel 
that Benjamin wrote "more passionately than 
when he loved me most." It may be, on the 
other hand, that Benjamin's expressions exceeded 
the ardour of his inward feelings. The Diary, at 
all events, expresses no joy at the meeting, but indi- 
cates rather that, in so far as he loves her at all, 
it is not for her own sake but for her daughter's. 

" I dine with Don Pedro, and attend a recep- 
tion at the great Chancellor's. Madame de Stael 
arrives. I go to see her, and find her altered, 
pale, and thin. The interview passed without 
any display of emotion. Albertlne is charming — 
as bright and clever as can be. How I wish that 
I could pass my life with her ! " 

And then again : — 

" Dinner at Gerando's with Ancillon, a man of 
wit. Pass the evening at Madame de Stael's. 
She is altogether changed, absent-minded, almost 
stiff in her manner, thinking only of herself, 
listening little, and interesting herself in nothing." 

In the letters, too, we find the same note sounded. 
" My relations, if relations I have, with Madame 
de Stael," he tells his cousin Rosalie, "are more 
than simple. I pass weeks without ever seeing 

298 



The Little Rift within the Lute 

her alone, and days without seeing her at all." 
And in another letter to the same cousin we find 
this remarkable passage : — 

" Madame de Stael is living, as you know, in 
a country house near Paris. As she is at a 
distance from me, I see her less than if she were 
at Paris. It is true, of course, that her charm and 
her celebrity attract to her house all the dis- 
tinguished strangers, both men and women, who 
are here. But a decline of one's interest affects 
one very much in the same way as a diminution 
of one's fortune. A man who would think an 
income of a thousand crowns wealth if he were 
penniless, regards it as poverty if he has had an 
income of ten thousand crowns in his time. 
Similarly those who have once been lovers relapse 
into mutual indifference when their affection for 
each other is only like that which they feel for 
people in general. Besides, I am a little angry 
with her, for I cannot speak to any woman in 
Paris without her spreading the report that I am 
in love — which is ridiculous at my age, and an 
inconvenience to me in my public position." 

There, clearly, is the little rift within the lute. 
Widening, it does not, unhappily, make the 
music mute, but imparts to it a harsh and grating 
sound. To indifference there succeeds an open 
quarrel — a very ugly quarrel about money matters. 
There was a time, as has been related, when 
Madame de Stael deliberately lent money to 
Benjamin Constant, in order to make it difficult 
for him to break off his relations with her. When 

299 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

he wanted to repay her, she refused to accept 
repayment, and would not even help him in fixing 
the amount of the debt. The settlement at 
which they finally arrived was only the result of 
his unflinching insistence. He practically forced 
upon her a mortgage on some of his property, 
repayable, together with whatever interest should 
have accrued, out of his estate, at his death. But 
now, of a sudden, we see Madame de Stael trying 
to upset that settlement and demanding cash. 

Her letters demanding the cash are included in 
the Critics collection ; and it is very painful to 
read them. The woman who of old had loved — 
and perhaps still longed to love — takes in them 
the tone of an indignant dun. Benjamin's con- 
duct, she declares, " passes all that I believed of 
the human heart." *' What a man ! " she exclaims. 
"A man capable of a cowardice which is worse 
than a theft ! " She will only communicate with 
him through the medium of her solicitor ; pro- 
ceedings shall be instantly begun. 

And so forth. It is a dispute for which one 
instinctively seeks a motive other than pecuniary, 
and the key to the mystery is the complaint to 
Rosalie that Madame de Stael cannot see Ben- 
jamin speak to another woman without spreading 
the report that he is in love with her. The 
report was not only circulated ; it was a true 
report. Benjamin was in love — head over ears 
in love — with Madame de Stael's bosom friend, 
Madame Recamier. Hinc illce lacrimcB. 

300 



CHAPTER XXVI 

Benjamin Constant in love with Madame Recamier — His account 
of the passion in his Diary — Finding that he loves in vain, he 
rejoins his wife. 

Napoleon's sister, Caroline, Queen of Naples, 
had asked Madame Recamier to find a good 
journalist who would write a pamphlet setting 
forth her husband's claims to consideration in 
that rearrangement of the map of Europe which 
the Allies were negotiating at Vienna. Madame 
Recamier at once thought of Benjamin Constant, 
whose pamphlet against the Emperor had made 
a great stir ; and as Benjamin Constant was no 
ordinary .journalist to be hired or bought, she 
flirted with him. For a season he was at least 
allowed to call her Juliette and to write to her 
several times a day ; and for the sake of those 
privileges, and in the hope of others which he 
did not obtain, he duly composed the pamphlet, 
and even returned the proffered fee of 20,000 
francs. We have only to look at the Diary to 
see how suddenly the passion seized him. 

" I pass the evening with Madame Recamier, 
and this woman, by whose side I lived in 
Switzerland, and whom I have seen so often and 
in so many circumstances without her making the 

301 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

faintest impression upon me, now, all of a sudden, 
inspires me with violent sentiments. Am I mad, 
or only silly ? But the feeling, I hope, will pass 
away." 

" Alas ! The feeling does not pass away ; the 
passionate fever which is only too familiar to me, 
has invaded my heart and obtained complete 
dominion over it. It is all up with work, with 
politics, with literature. The reign of Juliette 
begins. It is a circumstance, apparently of the 
most trivial character that has thrown me into 
this irresistible whirlwind of the heart and mind 
— a matter of advice to be given, and something 
to be written for the Murats, who have asked 
Juliette (who is under obligations to them) to 
apply to me. Her desire to do what they want, 
the seductions which she has thought it her duty 
to employ, and the confidential conferences thus 
necessitated, have turned my head. I feel that it 
is so. And yet I am aware of the danger to 
which I am exposing myself, for I have to do 
with an avowed coquette. But the fascination 
of the difficulty to be overcome leads me on." 

" My life is a torment through the inconceivable 
agitation into which this woman throws me. It 
is making me grow old before my time. I pay 
calls here and there, etc. Any device is good 
for killing time ; my blood is at fever heat. I 
have seen her alone. Never was her manner 
more coquettish — that is her charm. It is im- 
possible for me to tell whether I have made the 
slightest progress in her heart ; she does not 
even seem to be sorry for me. This evening, 

302 



Madame R^camier's Flirtation 

after she had given me an appointment and 
failed to keep it, I ahnost choked to see how little 
regret she showed. I had to leave her, and 
I fell into convulsions in my suffering and my 
passionate desire. 

"What has become of you, peaceful life of 
Gottingen ? " 

" I wanted to make her uneasy by my absence ; 
but I could not resist her, and I went to see her. 
I perceive that she becomes every day more cold 
and more reasonable. She inspires me with 
horror. I would never see her again if I thought 
that that would trouble her. I would give ten 
years of my life to make her suffer the half of 
what I am suffering." 



B 



To despair succeeds exaltation, in spite of 
enjamin's discovery that he has a rival. 

" She gave me an appointment, and I ran to 
keep it. My sufferings moved her. She promised 
that she would often see me alone, and that she 
would listen to me. She spoke to me affectionately 
of my interests and my career. Nevertheless, 
she made herself so agreeable, in my presence, 
with M. de Forbin,^ that I had to seek an inter- 
view with him afterwards and arrange that we 
will fight to-morrow." 

" What with Juliette's distress, and her tender 
promises on condition that I do not fight, and 
the efforts of the seconds, the matter is arranged, 

^ An einigri who had fought against his country, and was pre- 
sently to be made a peer of France. He and Benjamin Constant 
fought a duel, as the result of some press polemics, in 1822. 

303 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

though we are both resolved to assail each other 
again on the smallest ground of offence." 

" I saw her again to-day. Please God, I will 
not boast. I am too much afraid of some sledge- 
hammer blow. But I do believe that I have 
made a little progress. She believed that I was 
leaving her, and had written to complain. She 
admits that I love more passionately than anyone, 
and only doubts the durability of my attachment. 
She almost confessed to a fear that it would not 
last long." 

The attachment, at any rate, lasted longer 
than the lady's preferential smiles, for the next 
entry is : — 

" My stars ! I give it up. She has made me 
pass a diabolical day. She is an empty-headed 
bird, a cloud, without memory, without dis- 
crimination, without preferences. Her beauty 
having made her the object of continual homage, 
the romantic language to which she has listened 
has given her an appearance of sensibility which 
is only skin deep. I never find her in the 
morning the same person to whom I said good- 
night the evening before. Her memory is so 
defective that the pleasure which she has derived 
from one intimate tete-a-tHe never suggests to her 
that she should seek an opportunity for another. 
She is as kind to everybody as she is to me. 

" After this attack of despair and anger I calmed 
down, and, finding Forbin with her in the 
evening, I opened my heart to Juliette in his 
presence. This established confidential relations 
between the two aspirants to her favours. We 

304 



A Strange Confidante 

both proceeded to picture our love to her — with 
the result that I ended by bursting into a mad 
fit of laughter, 

" I must have done with it, and the sooner the 
better." 

So Benjamin tried to argue himself out of his 
mad passion, and selected a strange confidante 
to help him. 

" Thinking that I might detach myself from 
Juliette by a cold process of reasoning, I told the 
whole story of my mad passion to Albertine, 
though without mentioning the lady's name. I 
admit that this was absurd, and that I was wrong. 
Will that cure my foolishness, and shall I continue 
occupations so shamelessly puerile for a man 
like me ? But alas ! she holds my heart in her 
claws, and never was madness more inopportune." 

It was inopportune because Benjamin's political 
writings were attracting a great deal of notice. 
Distinction was in store for him if he chose to 
have it, as was made clear to him by the compli- 
ments paid to him whenever he dined out. On 
the other hand, Juliette was making it clear that 
she intended to offer him nothing more serious 
than her friendship. The next passages in the 
Diary show that conclusion demonstrated to him. 

" It seems silly to venture nothing with a woman 
with whom one is very much in love, and with 
whom one is often tite-a-tUe at two o'clock in 
the morning. I must persevere." 
U 305 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" I have an appointment with Juliette for this 
evening, and I prepare a written composition in 
order to arouse her emotions. It was a success. 
She was really moved; there was more abandon 
in her manner than ever. And yet I got nothing 
for my pains. There is a barrier there which I 
perceive, and which paralyses my endeavours." 

"It is all over. Beneath her manner there is 
nothing but the most complete indifference. 
Love is not to be looked for? Friendship? 
That is hardly worth while with a soul so dead 
as hers. I must go away from her, or I must 
cure myself. But I have been shouting that into 
my ears for the last ten months, and I feel that 
I shall do neither the one thing nor the other." 

The cure, indeed, was not to be found yet 
awhile. On the contrary, a fresh gleam of hope 
began to shine upon the lover. Juliette had been 
cruel, and had left a letter unanswered, so that 
Benjamin was reduced to tears and despair. 
But he had met Madame Krudner, who had 
promised to plead for him. "Who knows," he 
exclaims, "if the heart of Juliette will not be 
opened to me when attacked by this ally ? " 

Madame Krudner was, in truth, a strange 
ally in such a situation. She had been in her 
time a fashionable beauty, a woman of letters, 
and a frivolous and unfaithful wife. Her novel 
Valirie had appeared at about the same date as 
Madame de Stael's Delphine, and had been only 
less successful. Its theme, like that of Delphine^ 

306 



Attracted to Mysticism 

was autobiographical, and it confided to the world 
the author's passionate attachment for a man who 
was not her husband. The frailty, however, no 
less than the confession, belonged to the past. 
Madame Krudner had found religion, and was 
the most conspicuous of the mystics of the 
day. In that capacity she exerted a remarkable 
influence over the Russian Emperor, who is said 
to have been especially amenable to such influence, 
because his mistress had lately forsaken him for 
his aide-de-camp, and is said to have inspired the 
idea of the Holy Alliance. It was in that character 
also that she appealed to Benjamin Constant. 

Religion had always interested Benjamin. He 
had begun, as we have seen, to write a book 
about religion on the backs of playing-cards in the 
drawing-room of that Madame de Charriere whom 
he treated so badly ; and he continued to work 
at it, in the intervals of his amours, for a period 
of forty years, adding and altering almost until 
the day of his death. Moreover, religion for him 
had always meant mysticism rather than moral 
obligation. He had encountered mysticism at 
Geneva, where a mystic missionary was once 
brought before the magistrates and charged with 
paying excessive attentions to the ladies of his 
congregation, "under the pretence that he was 
inspired by God." At Lausanne the Chevalier 
de Langallerie had almost persuaded him to 
become a mystic. So that the ground was well 
prepared, and we read without surprise : — 

307 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" Madame de Krudner sent for me. Her con- 
versation did me good. She was adorable in her 
compassion for the love which tortures me, and 
promised her help in linking Juliette's soul with 
mine. At the same time she gave me a manu- 
script for Juliette. I read it. There are no new 
ideas in it, but it is touchingly true, and some of 
the passages penetrated to the depths of my soul. 
There, yes, there lies truth. I feel that it is 
so. All my passionate sentiments are subdued. 
O powerful and good God, complete my cure." 

" Madame de Krudner gave me a prayer to 
write out, and it made me melt into tears. What 
an amount of good that woman's influence does 
me ! I saw Juliette again, and was gentle and 
calm, but I fancy she is not very prone to religious 
ideas. She loses herself altogether in the coquetry 
which she makes it her business to practise, 
and in her pleasure or distress at tbe pain which 
she causes the three or four aspirants surround- 
ing her. Finally she is willing to do a little 
good when it is not too much trouble, and sets 
the mass above everything, sighing sighs which 
she believes come from her soul, though their real 
meaning is that she is bored." 

"I have seen Juliette again, and — miracle of 
miracles — she wants to find religion. Madame 
de Krudner triumphs, and hopes to succeed in 
uniting us spiritually. I prayed with Juliette." 

A good beginning, but quickly followed by dis- 
appointment. Neither love nor religion fulfilled 
the high expectations thus hastily formed of them. 
First it is the collapse of religion that is noted. 

308 



Collapse of Religion and of Love 

" Spent the evening with Madame de Krudner. 
There are certainly some good things among 
these people's beliefs and ideas, but they go too 
far with their miracles and their descriptions of 
Paradise, of which they speak as they might of 
their own bedrooms." 

And then we read of the collapse of love. 

"Alas! Madame de Krudner was not a true 
prophet, for Juliette has never treated me more 
shamefully. Yesterday she made four appoint- 
ments with me, and did not keep any of them ; 
and, in the evening, I found her the ne plus ultra 
of coquetry, perfidy, lying, and ; hypocrisy. But 
Madame de Krudner has given me strength to 
bear that and to calm myself. It is much. I will 
once more become a serious man, recover my 
strength of mind, and resume my pen. I feel 
that, and I wish it." 

The end is assuredly near, if it has not actually 
come, when a lover can write like that ; but the 
severest blow to Benjamin's passion must have 
been that struck during the Hundred Days. He 
was one of the last of the champions of the Bour- 
bons who remained at Paris to defy the Corsican 
— "this cunning half-barbarian," as he called him. 
He was still insulting the Emperor in thQ Journal 
des Debdts after his arrival at Fontainebleau ; 
and he has left it on record that he did so for no 
other reason than to please Madame R^camier. 
But Madame Recamier was still unkind. 

" How beautiful you looked, standing before 
309 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

your door," he wrote to her, "like a white angel 
ascending to heaven, and illuminating with celestial 
splendour the darkness of the earth. But," he 
added, " angels have a heart. They love, and it 
touches them to be loved." And then, having 
written that, he abandoned his plans for flight 
to America, accepted the overtures that were 
made to him, and gave in his allegiance to 
Napoleon, who nominated him Councillor of 
State. *' My love persists," he writes ; and the 
correspondence certainly persisted. Letters were 
still .being exchanged for some time after the 
Waterloo debacle ; but they grew less frequent 
and more formal. Such affection as Madame 
Rdcamier had bestowed upon Benjamin Constant 
was transferred to others, and ultimately to Chateau- 
briand ; and Benjamin, on his part, ceasing to be 
afflicted, went to Brussels to meet his wife. 

Madame Constant had travelled 150 leagues in 
mid-winter on "frightful roads" to join him. 
Informing Madame R^camier of her arrival, her 
husband adds, as it were, a testimonial to her 
merits : " She is an excellent person, with a very 
loving heart, a very noble soul, and an integrity 
of character and an honesty which are my admira- 
tion." Then, changing the subject, he proceeds 
to retrospects and reproaches : " When I consider 
how little advantage women have derived from 
loving me, I think you were very wise not to do 
so ; though I would congratulate you more warmly 
if it had cost you a greater effort to refrain. The 

31Q 



An Interesting Forecast 

only wrong that you have done me was to desire 
that I should love you — a weakness that lasted 
five days. I can speak to you on the subject 
without bitterness because the pain is past." 

It had not passed, however, without leaving 
traces behind. The correspondence did not cease ; 
it did not even cease to be [frequent. From 
London, where Benjamin and Charlotte spent 
several months after leaving Brussels, letters 
continued to be despatched, relating ostensibly 
to various little matters of business, but couched 
in language unusual in business communications. 
The most interesting passage is the writer's fore- 
cast — so soon to be belied — of the life that he 
will live on his return to Paris. ** I shall work 
there," he declares, ** at matters quite unconnected 
with politics. I shall not go into Society, for I 
hate it ; and I shall await the end of a life which 
promises me no further satisfaction, but which I 
should like to finish in tranquillity, far removed 
from strangers, giving to the person whose destiny 
I have taken in charge, and who is an angel in 
her affection and her goodness, a happiness which 
I shall try to pretend to share." 



311 



CHAPTER XXVII 

The Constants in London — The publication oiAdolphe — The place 
of Adolphe in French literature. 

Benjamin Constant was well received in London, 
though some of the leaders of English Society 
declined the acquaintance of Madame Constant on 
account of her double divorce. Very likely that 
was one of the reasons why she complained, as 
she repeatedly did, that the English climate was 
unsuitable for her health. The Diary notes that 
her " equivocal position " was a cause of embarrass- 
ment and annoyance. No details are given, 
however, and that branch of the subject may be 
passed over. A more interesting entry is this : — 

" I have read my novel to various friends. It 
has a great success. I am going to have it 
printed. They are giving me seventy louis 
for it." 

The reference was, of course, to 'Adolphe-\- 
the romance, written in 1807, in which the author 
had promised himself that he w^ould tell the story 
of his life. He finished it, the Diary tells us, in 
a fortnight ; and it does not appear that he had, 
at the time, any thought of publishing it. He 
acquired, however, the habit of reading it aloud 

312 



Adolphe a Great Success 

to his friends, much as Rousseau used to read 
aloud extracts from the Confessions ; and the 
habit grew upon him. The Hsteners generally- 
wept. 

At the particular reading to which the Diary 
alludes Miss Berry was present, and her account 
of the incident is as follows : — 

" In the evening at the Bourkes, where there 
had been a dinner, Lady Holland, Madame de 
Lieven, etc., and where Benjamin Constant read 
his romance, or history ; I do not know what to 
call it, as he has not given it a name. It is very 
well written — a sad and much too true history 
of the human heart, but almost ridiculously so 
with the company before whom it was read. It 
lasted two hours and a half. The end was so 
touching that it was scarcely possible to restrain 
one's tears, and the effort I made to do so made 
me positively ill. Agnes and I both burst into 
tears on our return home." 

That was the effect on an English audience, 
and we learn from the Due de Broglie that the 
effect on a French audience was similar. 

The Duke, be it remarked, was not a friendly 
witness. He had a poor opinion of the novel, 
and he did not like the novelist — for reasons 
which are obvious though he does not mention 
them. He was in love with, and about to marry, 
Albertine de Stael ; and Adolphe was therefore, 
from his point of view, a work which exposed 
a skeleton in the cupboard of the family which 

313 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

he proposed to enter. Its author seemed to be 
confessing — or perhaps to be boasting — that he 
had loved, and had tired of, the lady who was 
to be the mother-in-law of the head of one of 
the historic houses of France. He knew — for it 
v^as notorious — that the confession was founded 
upon fact. It was a condition of things which 
offended his dignity as well as his moral sense 
both before his marriage and afterwards. Looking 
backwards, in later years, he ignored what he 
could of the story, and took such revenge as was 
possible on Benjamin Constant, by holding him 
up to ridicule and contempt. 

Benjamin's relations with Madame Rdcamier 
and Madame Krudner gave him his opportunity. 
He drew a graphic picture of the aspirant to 
the favours of the coquette spending his nights 
in the salon of the mystic, "sometimes upon his 
knees engaged in prayer, and sometimes extended 
in ecstasy upon the carpet." He added that 
Benjamin was even anxious to enter into a com- 
pact with the Devil in order to obtain the 
privileges which he had vainly supplicated God 
to grant. He deplores the bad taste of Adolphe^ 
and declares that its effect upon French literature 
has been that of a taint or an infection. But he 
admits that, when the author read it aloud in 
Madame Recamier's drawing-room, the listeners 
were impressed. 

"There were," he writes, "twelve or fifteen 
of us present. The reading lasted nearly three 

314 



Curiosity Stimulated 

hours. The author was tired. As he approached 
the denouement, his emotion increased, and his 
fatigue augmented his emotion. At last he 
could no longer contain himself, but burst into 
sobs. The contagion affected the whole assembly, 
already itself much moved, and tears and groans 
prevailed. Then, suddenly, by one of those 
rapid transitions which, if we may believe the 
doctors, are not of rare occurrence, the sobs, 
having become convulsive, turned to nervous 
and irresistible bursts of laughter ; so that, if 
anyone had entered at that moment, and surprised 
the author and his listeners in that condition, he 
would have been at a loss to know what to think, 
or how to explain the effect by the cause." 

A romance which produced this sort of success 
when read aloud could hardly fail to attract 
attention when printed ; while the curiosity of 
the curious was further stimulated by the question 
whether it should or should not be read as a 
roman-a-clef. It is impossible to say what the 
author meant the world to think ; but we know 
what he thought his acquaintances were likely 
to think, from two passages in letters to Madame 
R^camier. 

In June 1816 he professes to regret the 
publication. "I never," he writes, "see the 
inconvenience of any course which I adopt until 
after I have adopted it. I am afraid that a 
person to whom it does not really bear the most 
distant application, whether as regards her position 
or her character, may be hurt. But it is too late." 

315 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

In October of the same year he reports, with 
apparent satisfaction: '''■ Adolphe has not caused 
any quarrel with the person whose unjust sus- 
ceptibility I feared. She has, on the contrary, 
seen my desire to avoid any allusion that might 
annoy her. I am told that another person is 
furious. That woman is very vain. I was not 
thinking of her at all." 

The explanation of the allusions, supposing 
them to need any, may be found in the letters 
which passed on the subject between Charles 
and Rosalie de Constant. It is Charles who 
writes first. 

"In reading Adolphe, my dear Rose, you will 
have observed that Benjamin explains his conduct 
by depreciating his character ; and, as someone 
used to say, he wished to make it known that his 
private life was governed by the same principles 
as his public career. He has caused the English 
papers to insert the statement that the characters 
in his novel are not portraits of persons whom 
anybody knows ; but those who have known 
both him and her will not be deceived by this 
declaration. Several of his readers will have 
known ElMnore ; her name was Lindsa}^ She 
was a young woman, agreeable in company, half 
French half English, brought to live in con- 
cubinage by the machinations of adventurers. 
She had intelligence, but no education. Her 
adventures with Benjamin made a good deal of 
talk in their time. The lady of Coppet has no 
place in this masterpiece. To sell oneself for 

316 



Rosalie de Constant's Criticism 

money seems to me the depths of degradation, 
and I am the less ready to forgive him for that 
than I should be if he had acted in pure cynicism. 
This book, my dear Rose, causes me real 
annoyance. I cannot rid myself of a feeling of 
attachment to my relatives — especially to those 
with whom I have been on intimate terms. 
Benjamin's wit and talents might have shed 
lustre on us all. He now covers us with mud 
and shame." 

Rosalie replies at length in a letter which 
constitutes one of the best criticisms ever written 
alike of the book and of its author. 

" You are right. Adolphe caused me real pain. 
It made me feel again something of the suffering 
which the story on which it is founded caused me. 
The situation is so well depicted that I fancied 
myself carried back to the time when I was the 
witness of an unworthy servitude, and of a weak- 
ness based upon a noble sentiment. It is not her, 
except in the respect of her tyranny. But it is 
him ; and I can quite understand that, after 
having been so often dragged into prominence, 
so diversely judged, and so often in contradiction 
with himself, he has found some satisfaction in 
explaining himself, and in pointing out the causes 
of his errors and the motives of his actions in a 
relation which has so powerfully influenced his 
life. But I would rather that he had not 
published the explanation. The story is sad, 
and inspires only painful sentiments from the 
beginning to the end. Where the material 
truth is altered, ideal truth suffers. I find the 

317 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

end specially painful : the consequences are dis- 
couraging. Poor Benjamin! I believe him to 
be one of the most unhappy men in the world. 
His mind works with such exactitude that it 
shows him every side of every question and all 
the consequences of all the errors into which 
enthusiasm or weakness lead him. Every year 
I hope that what is good and great in his nature 
will gain the upper hand, and place him in the 
position which he ought to occupy ; every year 
he causes me fresh grief and disappointment. 
But I will not hate him for faults which do no 
harm to anyone but himself, and are never 
inspired by bad intentions ; I shall consider 
that I owe him that share of friendship of 
which you deprived him so long ago with so 
much severity. . . . Perhaps if you had remained 
his friend, that would have checked a good many 
of his faults. In the days of the terrible scenes 
I often used to think : ' If he had a real friend — if 
Charles were here — he might be able to withdraw 
from this unworthy position.' ... In the novel 
you do not appear to perceive any of the beauties 
of thought and style with which it is replete. 
I think there are few novels more profoundly 
moral, or better demonstrating the power of 
education. What might he not have come to 
if his own education had been directed by a 
Christian father and mother! How easy it was 
to arouse him to an enthusiasm for good, to 
orderly habits, and even a passion for order! 
How many truths women can learn in his book 
concerning the part played by imagination in 
the passions, concerning their empire over their 
lovers, and on the manner in which their tender- 

318 



Opinion of Charles de Constant 

ness Increases while that of men diminishes. I 
beg you to read it again without thinking of 
Benjamin. You will see how full it is of acute 
and just remarks. . . . 

"You must understand that the Lindsay story 
was invented from beginning to end at Coppet. 
He had not time in his life to be influenced by two 
women as he was by one. But at least he has not 
done her the wrong of introducing her personality 
into his story ; for Ellenore is not in the least like 
the lady of Coppet, who has much more ludicrous 
displays of devotion at her command. ..." 

To which Charles rejoins : — 

" With you, my dear Rose, I thought I might 
express myself freely. What you tell me proves 
that I was wrong. Your determination to defend 
him will not allow me to open my heart and tell 
you all that I think ; so let us say no more about 
it. Only I swear to you that everybody mentioned 
Madame Lindsay in this connection before the 
arrival of Madame de Stael, whom I have only 
seen at Lady Hamilton's, I am told, too, that 
the death of Ellenore is that of a Madame Talma 
to whom he was much attached. You are pro- 
foundly ignorant of your cousin's adventures. 
Not that he made any secret of them, but that 
we have had the discretion not to tell you." 

What, then, is the truth.'* It is, of course, as 
the shrewd Sismondi divined, that the author had 
deliberately tried to throw his readers off the 
track. So far as externals went, Mrs. Lindsay 
was indubitably his model ; but the emotions 

319 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

which he analysed were the emotions which 
Madame de Stael had caused him. And the 
external circumstances of the story are of no 
importance. It is only the psychology that 
counts. 

As a story, indeed, Adolphe is rather badly put 
together. The stage management, and even the 
stage carpentry, leave much to be desired ; the 
novelists of our time are much better craftsmen. 
They know how to present a story in pictures, 
whereas he could only relate one. His novel 
reads less like a work of fiction than like a state- 
ment of a case drawn up for counsel's opinion. 
But that does not matter; or at all events it 
does not matter much. Benjamin Constant was 
doing a new thing, though he did it clumsily — 
plucking his heart out of his breast, dissecting it, 
and telling the world, in the form of fiction, not 
what he had observed or imagined, but what he 
had felt. Not what he had felt at this or that 
moment of supreme exaltation, but what he had 
felt on the whole, during illusion, and after dis- 
illusion. He was, in short, the pioneer of the 
novel of analysed experience — a common genre 
nowadays, but at that time new to literature. 
He was fin de siecle, as the phrase goes, at the 
very beginning of the nineteenth century. 

And, of course, analysing candidly and writing 
dispassionately, he discovered and expounded a 
new emotional situation, and broke up the con- 
ventional emotional machinery of novels. 

?!20 



A New Emotional Situation 

The conventions which held the field when he 
wrote were very simple. Either you loved or 
you did not ; but if you did love you loved 
tremendously — there was no middle course. The 
great tragedy was to love in vain ; the reasonable 
expectation was that love would last for ever. 
Sometimes, of course, it happened that love did 
not last for ever ; sometimes a man loved and 
rode away. But a conventional explanation was 
always ready to hand. Men were deceivers ever ; 
women had been the victims of their deceptions 
through the ages. 

To have read Adolphe when saturated with 
these conventions must have been like entering 
a dark room with a guide carrying a lantern, or 
like hearing a new witness whose unexpected 
evidence, abounding in "new facts," upsets the 
calculations of the Court. It is there shown that 
a love affair may involve many other tragedies 
besides that of loving in vain, and that a man 
who, according to the conventions of fiction, is 
merely a heartless deceiver, may be quite 
innocent of any intention to give pain, and may 
himself be the principal sufferer from the failure 
of his emotions to answer to the call upon them. 

The story is merely of a man who contracted a 
liaison, and got tired of it, and was then divided 
between his desire for freedom and his sense of 
responsibility to his mistress — who finds, to his 
dismay, that he has squandered his emotional 
substance in riotous living which he has not even 
X 321 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

enjoyed. His tragedy is the tragedy of trying to 
love and failing — of fanning a fire that cannot be 
made to blaze ; the tragedy also of the sense of 
futility and wasted effort which comes to the lover 
whose love has flickered out, and who reflects 
that he has missed what was perhaps his last 
chance of finding happiness in love. 

One does not suppose, of course, that Benjamin 
Constant was the first man who endured the 
mental agony of which he writes. He was no 
more the first than he was the last. Love being, 
as even the earliest novelists knew, the most 
intoxicating kind of happiness, no man who has 
once tasted it puts it away from him of malice 
aforethought ; he is no more tempted to do this 
than he is tempted to blind or maim himself, or 
destroy any of his faculties. So much is obvious ; 
and it is obvious, too, that the ccBur sensible — as 
they said in those days — must always have felt 
that there was tragedy in ceasing to love no less 
than in ceasing to be loved, and have suffered 
pain from the belief, erroneous though it may 
have been in many cases, that the extinction of 
his passion would make a woman miserable for 
the remainder of her days. But though these 
emotions were not new to life, they certainly 
were new to literature. Previous novelists had 
passed them by — perhaps because they were 
ashamed of them, perhaps because they did not 
think that they would attract the public. 
Benjamin Constant gave them expression be- 

322 



Influence on French Literature 

cause he was writing not for the public but for 
himself, and, in writing for himself, had no other 
wish than to tell the truth. 

He had his reward, though hardly in his life- 
time. It was his ambition, as he once wrote to 
Cousin Rosalie, to *' leave something behind 
him " ; and, to that end, he laboured for several 
years at a History of Religion in several volumes. 
He left it, and its place is in the lumber-room. 
But he also left Adolphe, and the place oi Adolphe 
is still upon the bookshelf on which we keep the 
books we read. Not only is it frequently re- 
printed ; its influence can also be traced in the 
works of many eminent French writers. The 
central idea of L' Education sentimentale — the 
idea of the futility of the philandering which 
leads nowhere — is the secondary idea of Adolphe. 
The story of Sapho is actually the story of 
Adolphe, set in a new social environment, and 
better told, by a better story-teller, with the 
embroidery characteristic of his genius. And 
though Sapho may not be the most amusing, or 
the most pathetic, or the most dramatic of 
Alphonse Daudet's novels, it is the best in the 
sense that it cuts most deeply into the hidden 
places of the human heart. 



323 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

In Paris — Marriage of Albertine to the Due de Broglie — Trouble 
about the dowry — Madame de Stael applies to Benjamin 
Constant for money — He refuses it — A quarrel and a renewal 
of friendship. 

Madame de Stael had reached the autumn of 
her life, but in the echoes of her activities that 
still reach us we detect no hint of an autumnal 
tone. Even failing health hardly relaxed her 
energies. Her manner was still that of one who 
felt that there was much to be done, and little 
time in which to do it; "faint but pursuing" 
might have been her motto at this stage. She 
was running after Benjamin Constant, whom she 
found, as we have seen, more evasive than ever 
before ; she was running after Necker's millions, 
which a Bourbon might be expected to repay, if 
only because a Bonaparte had refused to do so ; 
she was running after a husband for her daughter. 
At the same time she was trying to reconstitute 
Society in her salon in Paris, at Clichy, where she 
spent some of the summer months, and at Coppet, 
to which she paid a brief visit. 

" As for Society," she writes to Miss Berry, " it 
amounts to nothing, though a few remnants of it 
assemble at my house ; " but, in saying this, she 
did herself less than justice. The Due de Broglie 

324 



The Leader of Society 

speaks very differently. " She was welcomed 
and run after," he declares, "even at Court and 
by the Ministers, and humoured in the Faubourg 
Saint - Germain ; her drawing - room was the 
rendezvous of all the strangers whom the Restora- 
tion brought to Paris." Among the more dis- 
tinguished strangers whose names he mentions 
were Canning and the Duke of Wellington, Sir 
James Mackintosh, Lord Harrowby, and Hum- 
boldt. Even the Russian Emperor paid her a 
visit — that Lafayette might be presented to him : 
a fact which she asks Miss Berry to mention 
casually to her Russian friends, "in order that 
they may respect me." We hear from other 
sources of receptions at which she entertained as 
many as eight hundred guests. The Due de 
Broglie, we gather, did not think her extensive 
hospitality altogether becoming at the hour of the 
humiliation of her country ; but it doubtless 
appeared to her that, wherever Society could be 
gathered together, her place was at the head of it. 
In the pursuit of the millions, Benjamin 
Constant was her aide-de-camp. In his letters to 
Madame Recamier he repeatedly speaks of him- 
self as *' running " on her behalf, and as having to 
prevent or repair indiscretions due to her pre- 
cipitate hurry to be paid. Services of that 
material kind he was always ready to render, in 
order, as it were, to compensate her for his 
sentimental slackness. In the past the rendering 
of them had sometimes resulted in the renewal of 

325 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the sentiment for which they were intended to be 
the substitute. But that was no longer possible. 
As Charlotte had intervened in the past, so 
Madame Recamier was intervening- now. 

The relation of the parties to the drama was, 
indeed, at this stage, curious and confusing. 
Benjamin, in spite of his new passion, had not 
lost his affection for his wife. Several of the 
letters to Madame Recamier invite pity for her 
sad case. She is a great lady, the husband 
declares, in her own country ; but if she is 
brought to Paris there is a danger that Society 
will receive her coldly because of that double 
divorce. That is his excuse for leaving her in 
Germany while he is philandering in France ; 
and he appears to offer it in all sincerity. Mean- 
while he pays his court to Madame Recamier at 
Madame de Stael's house ; the two ladies remain- 
ing meanwhile upon the friendliest terms, though 
the latter took it upon herself to warn her lover 
against the former. 

"You will come to no good," she told him, "in 
your present state of mind, whatever the cause 
of it may be. You offend everybody by not 
listening to what people say, and not answering 
when you are spoken to, and refusing to be 
interested in anything that anybody says to you. 
You soon will not have a friend left if you go on 
like this. I, for my part, have ceased to care for 
you. Your wife will also quarrel with you ; and 
if it is love that accounts for your condition, I 

326 



Madame Rdcamier's Coquetry 

assure you that the person with whom you are in 
love will never have any affection for you." 

This last statement, at any rate, was a true one. 
Madame de Stael, knowing Madame Recamier 
from of old, knew that she was as passionless as 
she was beautiful, and never engaged her heart 
in any of her innumerable flirtations. The 
knowledge enabled her to remain her friend in 
spite of appearances, and to refrain from censorious 
criticism of her coquetry. Criticism on that head 
was left to Albertine, who, though young and 
brought up in the midst of levity, had already 
acquired serious views of life, and who, in July 
1 8 14, wrote to her friend. Mademoiselle de 
Barante : " Madame Recamier is pretty and good, 
but a life of trivial coquetry does not elevate the 
soul. She would be a better woman if she had 
not squandered her heart here, there, and every- 
where." 

What Madame de Stael's husband was saying 
and doing at this period we do not know. Seeing 
that her marriage to him was still unacknowledged, 
and that the child which she had borne him was 
being brought up under a false name in a village 
in the Jura, the probability is that he said and 
did very little. He had accepted an undignified 
position, and he had to make the best of it ; 
perhaps he was glad that he was an invalid and 
had that excuse for remaining in the background. 
At all events, he remained there ; and one hears 
little of him except that his wife did at least refuse 

327 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

to turn him out of her box at the Opera to make 
room for Benjamin Constant. His case, however, 
by no means exhausts the complications ; and 
perhaps the strangest fact of all is that the Due de 
Broglie, in the midst of this sentimental confusion, 
v/as at once associating with Benjamin Constant 
and making proposals for the hand of Albertine 
de Stael. 

The lovers, it is evident, suited one another 
admirably. Neither of them was very brilliant, 
and both of them were very serious. It was said 
by frivolous observers that in the days of their 
courtship they conversed chiefly on the principles 
of taxation ; but that is the sort of thing that 
frivolous people are much too fond of saying 
about serious people. The only grave barrier 
between them was a difference of religion ; and 
that hardly mattered, since all serious people, 
unless they are fanatics, are of the same 
religion. 

The religious difficulty, at all events, does not 
seem to have been the difficulty raised by the de 
Broglie family. The Duke's mother, married 
en secondes noces to the Marquis d'Argenson, gave 
her consent to the match, but his other relatives 
objected strongly. " Such," he writes, "was the 
prevalent current of opinion, and so great was the 
folly of aristocratic prejudice, lately disinterred, 
that my marriage with the daughter of a great 
Swedish nobleman was regarded as a mesalliance. 
I was reminded of the opposition between the 

328 



Aristocratic Prejudices 

Mardchal de Broglie and M. Necker in 1789; 
our two families were represented to me as 
Montagues and Capulets ; my uncle Am^dee, to 
whom I was under real and recent obligations, 
denounced me as ungrateful to him. The talk, 
in short, was loud, and grew louder from hour to 
hour." 

Probably the bridegroom's summary of that 
talk is not quite exact and complete. The Due 
de Broglie's relatives were as serious as he was 
himself, and they were not in love. Not the 
dead father-in-law but the living mother-in-law 
was presumably the obstacle in their eyes. She 
was serious enough in her own way, but hardly 
so in theirs. She had lived her private life in 
public, almost as one giving a performance to 
appreciative spectators. They can hardly have 
known less than Gibbon and Miss Berry about 
her relations with M. de Narbonne ; and they 
can hardly have known less than Barras about 
her relations with Benjamin Constant, and may 
easily have shared the doubts expressed in 
Barras' Journal whether the ''great Swedish 
nobleman " was in fact Albertine de Stael's father. 
Moreover, even if they entertained no such doubts 
and resfarded the scandals which had raised the 
question as ancient history, there was still the 
case of Rocca to be considered. It is all very 
well for the Due de Broglie to write that Rocca's 
malady condemned him to "retirement and 
absolute silence." Rocca, at any rate, was in 

329 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Paris, figuring as amant en titre, written of by- 
Byron as " Monsieur 1' Amant." One can under- 
stand the objections of serious, old-fashioned 
people to a mother-in-law thus attended and 
encumbered. 

" But I stuck to it," writes the lover. ** The 
marriage was arranged and announced immedi- 
ately after my mother's arrival, and was only 
postponed on account of the settlements which 
depended upon the repayment of two million 
francs generously lent to the State by 
M. Necker." 

This, however, is another branch of the subject 
concerning which the Due de Broglie only tells 
us a portion of the truth. The actual facts have 
to be deduced from the correspondence published 
in the Critic to which allusion has already been 
made. The dowry, it appears from these letters, 
was a sine qua non of the marriage ; and if the 
Government would not discharge its debt to 
Necker, it must be provided from some other 
source. The sudden return of Napoleon from 
Elba interrupted the negotiations proceeding for 
the assumption of the liability by the State. 
Madame de Stael, who had retired to Coppet, 
could not conveniently lay her hand upon the 
ready money ; and she decided that Benjamin 
Constant must find it for her. He owed her 
(as she considered) 80,000 francs ; and he 
had implored her (so she declares) upon his 
knees to permit him to associate himself with 

330 



Trouble about the Dowry 

Albertine's happiness. Now was the time. 
Benjamin must tear up the old agreement and 
"place 40,000 francs at Albertine's disposal." In 
April 1 8 1 5 she wrote to him to that effect, adding 
that, in anticipation of his favourable answer, she 
had promised that sum to the Broglie family. 

Unfortunately, however, Benjamin Constant 
had no more facilities for laying his hands upon 
ready money than Madame de Stael herself. 
Most people, in fact, found ready money a scarce 
commodity during the Hundred Days. He had to 
excuse himself, therefore, and the correspondence 
speedily became embittered. "You, owe me 
80,000 francs" runs through it like a leit-motif, 
there are, as we have already seen, the most 
violent threats of legal proceedings. There is 
very little on the subject in the Journal Intime, 
but one entry shows us what was Benjamin's 
point of view. "A letter," he writes, "from 
Madame de Stael. She would like me to do 
nothing to promote my own fortune, and to hand 
over to her the little that I possess. A delightful 
arrangement that ! " And he adds elsewhere that 
the quarrel has quite destroyed the remnant of 
affectionate sentiment which he had still retained 
for her. 

No doubt it had nearly done so, if not quite. 
Unable at the moment to be generous, Benjamin 
Constant had only adhered to legal rights freely 
bestowed upon him ; and he was entitled to be 
angry at reproaches which he esteemed unjust. 

331 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Madame de Stael herself admitted as much when 
she had leisure to be reasonable. " Your justifi- 
cation," she wrote presently, "is perfect;" and 
her letters, growing gradually milder, may almost 
be read as an apology presented in instalments. 
In June, a few days before the battle of Waterloo, 
she writes : " If I can reconcile myself with God, 
after having reproached you, I will perhaps 
become softer." In July she is saying : " I wish 
that you believed that I am better disposed to 
you than I was." In August her hopes of 
recovering Necker's loan having improved through 
the fall of the Empire, she appeals to Benjamin 
to do what he can to strengthen Victor de 
Broglie's devotion to her daughter: "Try to 
speak of her before him. One can praise her 
certainly without exaggerating." In September 
it is : "The state of your health causes me much 
uneasiness," and also : " I rely entirely on your 
pride and your zeal in what concerns Albertine ; " 
and finalty : " Give my son good advice about 
my affair. Do not think any more of the one 
that was in question between us." 

So that was the end of that. The restored 
Bourbons undertook to pay their debt to Necker; 
the Papal permission for the mixed marriage was 
obtained ; Victor de Broglie set out for Coppet, 
accompanied by Auguste de Stael and his half- 
brother, Rene d'Argenson. They crossed the 
Jura in the snows of January 1816, at the time 
when Benjamin Constant was preparing to leave 

332 



Albertine's Wedding 

Brussels for London. Sismondi joined them, and 
they went on over the Mont Cenis to Parma, 
Bologna, Florence, and Pisa, where Madame 
de Stael and Albertine awaited them. The 
marriage was celebrated at Pisa on February 20, 
1816, Sydney Smith's brother, Bob Smith,^ acting 
as witness. It was from Albertine, now Duchesse 
de Broglie, that Benjamin Constant heard the 
news. "All the great emotions of my life," she 
wrote, " make me wish to think of you and speak 
of you. . . . What a sad combination of circum- 
stances was necessary [to prevent you from being 
present at my wedding! I would not have 
believed it six years ago ! " 

" By God's grace, she is happy," Madame de 
Stael wrote in a letter despatched under the 
same cover; and Benjamin wrote to Madame 
Recamier : — 

" I know that Albertine is married, and I hope 
she will be happy. Her husband is an excellent 
man, and I do not think that she on her part, 
brought up as she has been, feels any imperious 
need of an expansive sensibility. By the excesses 
and reactions of her own enthusiasm Madame de 
Stael has taught her children to be perfectly 
rational. At the bottom of my heart I have, 
together with my affection for her, a kind of 
grudge similar to that of the Irishman who 
accused a woman of having changed him at 
nurse." 

^ Commonly called " Bobus." Co-editor with Canning of the 
Etonian Microcosm, and afterwards Advocate-General of Bengal. 

333 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Madame de Stael in Italy with the Broglies — Return to Coppet — 
Distinguished guests — Byron's visit. 

Let it be said at once that Albertine de Stael 
found calm contentment in her married life. 
Perhaps, if she had been quite enthusiastically 
and deliriously happy, she would have been a 
little less prone to quote the Scriptures in her 
correspondence and to appeal to the consolations 
of religion. One always suspects something of 
the sort in the case of the ostentatiously religious ; 
but it is not necessary to insist. The Due 
de Broglie, at any rate, was so attached to his 
wife that, when she died at a comparatively early 
age, he withdrew from all his public activities ; 
and there is no evidence that the divergence of 
their creeds was ever, even temporarily, a cause 
of estrangement. The agreement was that the 
sons should be brought up as Catholics and the 
daughters as Protestants ; but the whole of their 
posterity became Catholic in the course of time. 
Some of Madame de Stael's grandchildren even 
took Catholic orders. Her great-grandson, Comte 
d'Haussonville, the present owner of Coppet, an 
Academician, and the author of Le Salon de 
Madame Necker, was one of the polemists who 

334 



In Italy with the Broglies 

combated the anti-clerical policy of MM. Waldeck- 
Rousseau and Combes in the columns of Le 
Gaulois. A deplorable relapse, no doubt, in the 
eyes of many readers, but one on which there is 
no need to comment in the present volume. 

The early days of the honeymoon were passed 
in the north of Italy in the society of Madame 
de Stael ; and the course of events is best traced 
from the Due de Broglie's Reminiscences, 

He speaks, in the first instance, of an excursion 
to Pescia to see Sismondi, the form and scope 
of whose work on the History of the French is 
said to have been determined by the conversations 
which then took place. Lucca was next visited, 
and then, on the return to Pisa, Madame de Stael 
announced that she was bored, and " at the first 
breath of spring transferred her establishment 
to Florence." There, once again, she found 
brilliant society, of which the most distinguished 
pillar was the Comtesse d' Albany, mistress 
successively of the Young Pretender, of the 
poet Alfieri, and of the French painter Fabre. 

"Every day," the Due de Broglle writes, 
"between two and three o'clock in the after- 
noon, she kept a gossip and scandal shop. 
Every member of the little club laid at her feet 
his tribute of news of no importance, seasoning 
it with trivial comment. Not all who wished 
to come were admitted to this gathering. An 
exception was made in favour of Madame de 
Stael, and I was invited in her train ; but I did 

335 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

not abuse my privilege. Once was enough for me. 
Evil speaking has always seemed to me the most 
childish and foolish thing in the world." 

Towards the end of Lent the Due de Broglie, 
accompanied by Auguste de Stael, escaped to 
Rome. The escape was from the insistence 
of his mother-in-law that he should always be 
attending receptions, dressed in his best clothes. 
He refused to call at the French Embassy, and 
neglected to see the Pope, preferring to spend 
his time among the monuments and in the picture 
galleries. As soon as Easter was over he returned 
to Florence, whence, three days later, the whole 
party set out for Coppet. At Bologna, where 
they passed a day, the leaders of Society were 
afraid, for political reasons, to associate with 
Madame de Stael, feeling that their connection 
with Murat's mad enterprise had already com- 
promised them sufficiently. At Milan, on the 
contrary, Madame de Stael *'was well known, 
and her salon in her inn was never empty." 
Gonfalonieri, the rising hope of the Italian 
Liberals, held long and violent arguments with 
Schlegel, and " dear Monti " also came to call. 
Benjamin Constant, it will be remembered, said 
that he had "a superb face"; but the Due de 
Broglie declares that he "cut a poor figure," that 
his "attitude was humble and his conversation 
not brilliant," and that Madame de Stael tried 
in vain " to restore him to self-respect and to the 
good opinion of others." 

336 



Distinguished Guests 

At Milan the party divided. Madame de Stael, 
attended by Rocca and Schlegel, returned to 
Switzerland by the Mont Cenis and Savoy. The 
Due and Duchesse de Broglie went to Como, 
and thence crossed the Simplon. At Coppet, 
however, all were again reunited ; and Coppet 
was once more gay. The leaders of the Opposi- 
tion in Genevan politics were welcome there — 
such men as Etienne Dumont, Pictet Diodati, 
Frederic de Chateauvieux, and de Candolle, the 
naturalist ; while open house was also kept for 
such travellers making the grand tour as came 
that way, and were worthy to be received. 

Lord Lansdowne was one of the visitors — " the 
perfect model," says the Due de Broglie, "of the 
great Whig nobleman." Henry Brougham was 
also entertained there. Asked some question as 
to English legal procedure, he sat down and wrote 
currente calamo a long essay on the subject, which 
is preserved among the Broglie papers. Von 
Stein — he who had reorganised the Prussian 
army after Jena — passed through on his way to 
Italy, pausing to denounce in indignant language 
the revival of despotic institutions in Central 
Europe, and expressing himself with extreme dis- 
dain concerning his own sovereign, the Prussian 
Court, and the German Bureaucracy. Laharpe 
— the friend of the Emperor Alexander, who had 
organised the liberation of the Canton of Vaud 
from the dominion of Berne — came over from the 
house at Lausanne where, living in retirement in 
Y 337 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the bosom of his family, he looked down upon 
the scene of his triumphs, and fought his battles 
over again. To strike the note of contrast with 
him, there was the Chevalier de Langallerie — he 
who had almost persuaded Benjamin Constant to 
become a mystic — a " fat little man," according to 
the narrator, who enjoyed his dinner and com- 
plained of indigestion, snored in an arm-chair, and 
awoke to invite pity for himself as a victim of 
insomnia, yet conversed admirably upon spiritual 
matters. Finally, to strike the note of contrast 
with everybody, there was Byron. 

He and Madame de Stael had not altogether 
liked each other when they had met in London. 
As rival social lions they had roared against each 
other, stood in each other's light, and interfered 
with each other's importance. He had protested 
that her conversation was too copious ; she had 
credited him with "just enough sensibility to ruin 
a woman's happiness." But now the conditions 
were different. The principal victim of Byron's 
sensibility was Byron himself; his admirers had 
turned on him and hounded him from the country. 
That was the sort of situation with which Madame 
de Stael could sympathise. He had hesitated to 
call, but his apprehensions were quite groundless. 
Though an English visitor, Mrs. Hervey, fainted 
in the Coppet drawing-room when she heard his 
name announced, the Coppet hostess did not mind. 
Most likely she was angry with the lady. At 
any rate, she was flattered to be presented with 

338 



Byron's Visit 

a copy of Glenarvon — the novel in which 
Byron's character was attacked by Lady CaroHne 
Lamb ; and she took the keenest interest in his 
difference with Lady Byron. " I believe," he 
writes, " Madame de Stael did her utmost to 
bring about a reconciliation between us. She 
was the best creature in the world." 

Her difficulty in so exhibiting herself must havfe 
been the greater because neither her admiration 
nor her friendship for the poet was shared by the 
members of her household. On the occasion of 
Mrs. Hervey s hysterics the company in general 
"looked as if his Satanic majesty had been 
among them ; " and if her son-in-law did not 
follow the example of the others, his reason for 
refraining was by no means his esteem for Byron's 
talents, but rather his feeling that he was himself a 
superior person, capable of seeing through Byron's 
fanfaronade. This is his account of the matter, 
and his appreciation of the poet : — 

" Lord Byron, an exile of his own free will, 
having succeeded, not without difficulty, in per- 
suading the world of fashion in his own country 
that he was, if not the Devil in person, at least 
a living copy of Manfred or Lara, had settled for 
the summer in a charming house on the east 
bank of the Lake of Geneva. He was living 
with an Italian physician named Polidori, who 
imitated him to the best of his ability. It was 
there that he composed a good many of his little 
poems, and that he tried his hardest to inspire 

339 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the o-Qod Genevans with the same horror and 
terror that his fellow-countrymen felt for him ; 
but this was pure affectation on his part, and 
he only half succeeded with it. ' My nephew,' 
Louis XIV. used to say of the Due d'OrMans, ' is, 
in the matter of crime, only a boastful pretender.' 
Lord Byron was only a boastful pretender in the 
matter of vice. 

"As he flattered himself that he was a good 
swimmer and sailor, he was perpetually crossing 
the Lake in all directions, and used to come fairly 
often to Coppet. His appearance was agreeable, 
but not at all distinguished. His face was hand- 
some, but without expression or originality ; his 
figure was round and short ; he did not manoeuvre 
his lame legs with the same ease and nonchalance 
as M. de Talleyrand. His talk was heavy and 
tiresome, thanks to his paradoxes, seasoned with 
profane pleasantries out of date in the language 
of Voltaire, and the commonplaces of a vulgar 
Liberalism. Madame de Stael, who helped all 
her friends to make the best of themselves, did 
what she could to make him cut a dignified figure 
without success ; and when the first moment of 
curiosity had passed, his society ceased to attract, 
and no one was glad to si^e him." 

So the summer passed. Madame de Stael, in 
the leisure which her social duties left her, was at 
work on her Considerations sur la Revolution 
frangaise — a combined panegyric of her father 
and of the British Constitution. Rocca was still 
ill, and she wrote about him to Madame R^camier, 
telling her what she had previously told Benjamin 

340 



The Magnetism of Paris 

Constant, that his nature was changing, and add- 
ing : ** Such patience, such thorough appreciation 
of and thankfulness for my care, have made him 
the most perfect friend that I could imagine " — 
language which, 'it will be admitted, was hardly 
that of passion. To Benjamin, at about the same 
date, she wrote that her health was failing and 
her life likely to be short, concluding : " But 
I value it because it is now a happy one, and I 
deplore the time of which I was robbed by un- 
happiness." Evidently she was at last outgrowing 
the violence of passion, though she was not yet 
losing, and indeed was never to lose, her political 
and social interests, and her desire to be always 
"in the movement." 

To her, indeed, as to Voltaire, this passion to 
be in the movement was to be fatal. The attrac- 
tions of the French capital lured the sage from 
Ferney to his death ; similarly Madame de Stael, 
who might have lived long if she had remained at 
Coppet, heard Paris calling, and could not resist 
the call, even at a season at which the climate was 
likely to be unfavourab. 2 both to her own health 
and to that of her husband. Her son-in-law 
returned before her ; but she soon followed him, 
attended by Rocca and Schlegel, arriving early in 
November. 

"That was her last winter, "the Due de Broglie 
writes. 



341 



CHAPTER XXX 

Madame de Stael's last journey to Paris — Her illness and death. 

Madame de Stael was already ill when she 
arrived at Paris. The first symptoms of paralysis 
had declared themselves. But she would not give 
in or submit to treatment. 

"She resisted the attack," writes the Due de 
Broglie, ** with heroic impetuosity : invited every- 
where, going everywhere, keeping open house, 
receiving in the morning, at dinner, and in the 
evening, all the distinguished men of all parties, 
ranks, and stations, taking the same interest in 
politics, literature, philosophy, and Society, 
whether serious or frivolous, intimate or noisy, of 
the Government or of the Opposition, as in the 
brightest days of her early youth." 

He goes on to name names. M. de Barante, 
we read, gave a dinner for the purpose of intro- 
ducing Royer-Collard to Madame de Stael, and 
Royer-Collard, being a pedant, was shocked by 
her vivacity. Camille Jordan also reappeared 
upon the scene. The Due de Broglie does not 
mention that Camille Jordan had once been 
Madame de Stael's lover, but merely, while 
admitting the charm of his conversation, sniffs at 
him as "provincial." From other sources we hear 

342 



Alarming Symptoms 

of her as entertaining Pasquier, Fontanes, Lally, 
and Chateaubriand An extract from a letter from 
Madame Rilliet-Huber to Henri Meister may 
complete the picture. 

** Madame de Stael has reached the height of 
her ambition. Her house is the most animated 
in Paris, and she exercises all the influence she 
wishes without encountering any opposition. 
Her fortune is great ; her daughter is charming ; 
Rocca may pass ; but I am sorry to say that her 
health is much disturbed. She writes to me often, 
and wishes to return to Coppet." 

The date of that letter is February 14, 1817 ; 
the strain of the season had had time to tell. It 
was only a few days later that the symptoms 
became alarming. Attending a reception at the 
house of the Due Decazes, Madame de Stael 
fainted on the staircase. She was lifted to her 
carriage, and from her carriage to her bed. 
Dropsy was diagnosed, and when the dropsy got 
better, paralysis began to set in. 

Even so, thanks to her strength of will, she 
seemed to get better. She rose, and dressed, and 
"received ; " she even gave dinner parties, though 
she had to leave her children to do the honours of 
her table. As the weather improved, she was 
removed from her house in the Rue Royale to 
another in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, where 
she sat in the garden in a state of semi-somnolence. 
It was at this stage, presumably, that she wrote 

343 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

(or rather dictated) her last pathetic letter to Miss 
Berry. ''Cruel cramps," she said, had deprived 
her of the use of her hands and feet ; for ninety 
days she had been lying on her back, "like a 
tortoise, but much more troubled in my mind 
and my imagination than that animal." She 
had hoped to start for Switzerland on the 
I St of May, but cannot even be sure of starting 
on the I St of July. In fact, she passes her time 
alternately in self-deception and despair : " Truly 
it is a punishment of Heaven when the most 
active person in the world finds herself as it were 
petrified." "May God," she prays, "deliver me 
from the abyss in which His hand alone can 
avail me ! " 

Every physician of note in Paris was called in ; 
and as none of them afforded any relief or held 
out any hope, the Due de Broglie posted to 
Geneva, meaning to bring the celebrated Dr. 
Butini back with him. Butini would not come. 
He was an old man, he said, and would not risk 
his own health in a hopeless case. The next 
best man was Dr. J urine, who knew Madame de 
Stael, and out of affection for her rather than for 
the sake of his fee, consented to take the journey. 
But he arrived too late, and his treatment had not 
even the temporary illusion of success. It was 
now apparent to all that the effort to live had 
nearly exhausted itself, and that the end was very 
near. 

Yet the effort continued. " When I arrived at 
344 



The Closing Scenes 

Paris the 17th of June," writes one of Miss Berry's 
correspondents, ** she was supposed to be at the 
point of death ; she rallied from that attack, and 
her family indulged great hopes, but which no 
physician encouraged. ... I saw her a week 
before her death; she was as eager as ever on 
politics. M. de Montmorency was by her bed- 
side, and she disputed with him the great question 
of liberty as formerly. I dined there on the 
Sunday ; she saw the Duke of Orleans. ..." 

And so we come to the closing scenes, which 
may be best described in the Due de Broglie's 
words. 

*' Madame de Stael received, day and night, the 
passionately anxious care of her daughter and of 
a young English lady who had, for many years, 
resided at Geneva, and whose life, so stormy and 
unfortunate, had resolved itself, if I may so say, 
into ardent and impetuous devotion to our family. 
Mademoiselle Randall and my wife spent alternate 
nights at the foot of the bed of pain ; my brother- 
in-law and myself watched alternately in the 
adjoining room. We could see the fatal moment 
draw nearer from hour to hour. The nervous 
agitation became continuous ; the interval between 
the spasms shorter and shorter. Madame de 
Stael deceived herself no longer. The loftiness 
of her soul, the vivacity of her mind, and her 
interest in persons and things never deserted her 
for a day, an hour, or a minute. What she feared 
was that she might not see herself die — that she 
might' fall into a sleep from which she would not 
wake. 

345 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

" A sad presentiment ! 

"On the 13th of July, towards eleven o'clock 
in the evening, at the close of a very painful day, 
everything seemed quiet in Madame de Stael's 
room ; she was dozing. Mademoiselle Randall 
was at her pillow, holding one of her hands ; my 
wife had lain down exhausted on a chair bedstead, 
and my brother-in-law was lying on a sofa. I 
went home, and threw myself, without undressing, 
on my bed. Towards five in the morning, I 
awoke with a start, jumped out of bed, and ran to 
Madame de Stael's room. Mademoiselle Randall, 
who had fallen asleep while holding her hand as 
I have described, had found, on waking, that the 
hand was cold, and that the arm and the whole 
body were motionless. 

" All was over. 

"The doctor in attendance, summoned in haste, 
found only a lifeless corpse upon the bed." 

She had died as she had feared, and as many 
another would have wished to die — with no priest 
to mumble formulae ; with no accompaniment of 
unavailing tears, and no harrowing and pro- 
tracted deathbed scene ; unconscious of all the 
complications at the hour when the tangle was cut. 

The occupant of the second floor of the house 
placed his apartment at the disposal of the 
mourners. " I installed M. Rocca, M. Schlegel, 
and Mademoiselle Randall there," writes the Due 
de Broglie, "and I returned to pass the night in 
the house of the dead. Benjamin Constant came 
to join me there, and we watched by the body 

346 



Necessity stronger than Moral Law 

together. He was touched to the quick, and 
genuinely moved. After having exhausted 
personal recollections, we consecrated long hours 
to serious reflections, discussing all the problems 
which naturally arise in the soul in the presence 
of death." An impressive scene truly, and per- 
haps the most moving in the whole of the troubled 
history of their love. 

Each of the lovers had been unfaithful to the 
other, and yet each of them had been necessary 
to the other — a truth which they had proved to 
themselves again and again, while trying their 
hardest to disprove it. Both lives had been rich 
in other interests, both personal and political ; 
but their passion had been the great fact in both 
lives that always mattered even when they per- 
suaded themselves that it did not matter at all. 
Though Benjamin Constant had married a second 
wife and Madame de Stael had taken to herself 
a second husband, they both found it impossible 
to respect the barrier which they had themselves 
set up. We have seen how Benjamin, while 
apparently living a peaceful domesticated life with 
Charlotte at Gottingen, noted in his Diary that 
he was as much occupied with Madame de Stael 
as he had been ten years before. We have also 
seen Madame de Stael assuring Benjamin Constant 
that her marriage to Rocca need be no hindrance 
to the renewal of her intimacy with him. Their 
relations towards each other were governed by a 
Necessity stronger than any moral law. 

347 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

It is true that, with the passing of the years, 
the intensity of the emotion had slackened. That 
was a part of their tragedy — as it is a part of the 
tragedy of all dramas that are too long drawn out. 
Both of the lovers had nearly attained fifty years 
of age ; both of them had outgrown the early 
capacity for passion. Madame de Stael's letters 
show that she had latterly cherished the memory 
of a passion rather than the passion itself 
Benjamin Constant's Diary shows him fully per- 
suaded in his own mind that the last remnant of 
his sentiment had perished. 

There exists, and has been printed, a character 
sketch of Madame de Stael which was to have 
been included in a work which Benjamin Constant 
began but never finished on the early years and 
early friends of Madame R^camier. It was written 
at the time of his foolish unreciprocated passion for 
that lady, and it is couched in the cold tone of 
critical and amused approbation. All the incon- 
sistencies — and they were many — in Madame de 
Stael's character are brought into clear relief. 
Madame de Stael is depicted as a woman who 
always does what she wishes to do, and always 
believes that whatever she does is right, support- 
ing any line of conduct by the appeal to first 
principles divinely sanctioned. 

"If she is in love, and if the object of her love 
has a will that opposes her own, and speaks of the 
claims of his family and his duties, or asserts 
any other title to independence, partial or com- 

348 



Love stronger than Death 

plete, permanent or transitory, then nothing is 
more beautiful than to hear Madame de Stael 
talk with all the energy of the Nouvelle H^loise 
of the communion of souls, of devotion, which is 
the sacred duty of every superior nature, of happi- 
ness, and of the sacro-sanctity of two existences 
indissolubly linked together. 

"Is she, on the other hand, a mother, and does 
one of her children prefer the enthusiasm of an 
absorbing passion to the obedience which she 
claims ? Then nothing is more sublime than the 
picture which she draws of the duties of filial piety, 
the obligations of the family, the rights of a 
mother, and the necessity of a young man's dis- 
engaging himself from frivolous affections in order 
to enter upon an honourable career ; for every man 
owes an account to Providence for the faculties 
which Providence has given him, and woe upon 
him who thinks that he can live for love! In all 
that Madame de Stael is not an egoist ; for she 
does not mean to be one, and morality is a matter 
of conscience." 

That is the most characteristic passage in the 
essa}^ It has been said, most plausibly, to be the 
criticism of a lover who has definitely ceased to 
love. Benjamin Constant, when he penned it, 
would have considered the verdict just. But 
death came and proved that love was stronger 
than death. Benjamin Constant was always in 
love with love even when he was not in love with 
Madame de Stael ; he himself has written that 
the necessity for love was the ruling passion of his 
life and the determining factor of his career. 

349 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

Madame de Stael had loved him to his undoing, 
but at least she had loved him as no other woman 
had. It was inevitable, at this solemn hour, that 
he should remember that — the memories returning 
to him with a rush — and should forget the rest. 

For if he could not love her, at least he could 
love no other. At the time of the last estrange- 
ment he had written that there was no longer 
anything for him to look forward to in life. He 
might or might not have continued in that mood 
if she had lived. But she had passed beyond 
these voices, and, passing, had set the seal upon 
his words. The curtain had fallen on the drama. 
It would never be lifted, and there would be no 
other drama to follow ; he was too old to begin 
his sentimental life again. So he watched by the 
bier, engaged with many solemn reflections, 
mourning not only for his mistress, but also for 
his own dead youth. 



350 



CHAPTER XXXI 

The last years of Benjamin Constant. 

They buried Madame de Stael, according to her 
desire, in her father's sepulchre at Coppet. The 
coffin was met by Bonstetten and Sismondi — the 
"Mondi"^ who had still remained faithful when 
the fear of Napoleon drove away her other 
friends ; and all Geneva, as the Due de Broglie 
tells us, followed the funeral. Her will ac- 
knowledged her husband, who only survived her 
a few months, and the child which she had 
borne to him. The latter had been registered in 
the name of Giles, and described as the son of 
American parents. Certain formalities had 
therefore to be performed in order that the 
situation might be regularised. Auguste de 
Stael duly performed them, and fetched the 
infant from the house of the Protestant minister 
who had taken charge of it and kept its mother's 
secret. "I ask you," he wrote to Meister, "to 
extend to my brother Alphonse the protection 
and friendship with which you are good enough 
to honour me. I hope that he will one day be 
worthy to feel the value of it." There are also 

^ " Die meisten Bekannten fliehen, Frende wanken, nur Mondi 
nicht." — Bonstetten to Frederika Brun. 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

some affectionate references to the child in the 
letters of the Duchesse de Broglie. She finds 
him backward, takes him for walks, and tries to 
teach him what little she knows of natural history. 

This Rocca episode is not, it must be allowed, 
an agreeable story for an admirer of Madame de 
Stael to face, and most of her admirers have 
therefore slurred over it, hinting apologies as they 
passed. She could not be expected, they suggest, 
though without insisting, publicly to change a 
name which she had made illustrious by her 
talents ; and so she may herself have argued. 
But the excuse leads rather far. We need not, 
indeed, concern ourselves about the wrong done 
to Rocca ; he was a fool, and was treated accord- 
ing to his folly. But the case of the child, brought 
up, with a false dtat civil, under the name of 
Giles, is pitiful and painful. He was sacrificed, 
not to his mother's proper pride, but to her 
vanity. She was more afraid of laughter than of 
moral reprobation. In most matters, and on 
most occasions, she could defy the world ; but 
she could not afford to place the weapon of 
ridicule in her enemies' hands, and shrank from 
their mockery of her autumnal love. She shrank 
from it the more, no doubt, because her love for 
Rocca was not really love, but only make-believe, 
and a concession to the weakness of the flesh. 
That is all that there is to be said on the subject, 
and it is best to say it and have done with it. 

Something should be said, however, of the 
352 



Overrated and then Underrated 

literary genius which, in the view of Madame de 
Stael's admirers, partially justified her in adopting 
different moral standards from those accepted by 
less gifted persons. She was certainly overrated 
in her lifetime, and she has probably been under- 
rated since. She was highly esteemed at one 
time for her contributions to metaphysical and 
political philosophy, but these are negligible 
because they were not original. The voice was 
only an echo, and the echo was not always 
accurate. In metaphysics the chief credit belongs 
not to the interpreter who tried, in a few well- 
chosen words, to tell the world what Kant thought, 
but to Kant who did the thinking, and, in a less 
degree, to Schlegel and Crabb Robinson, who 
expounded the doctrine of Forms and Categories 
in language which Madame de Stael was capable 
of understanding. In politics she echoed Necker, 
and had little to say except that all would have 
been for the best in the best of all possible worlds if 
Necker 's advice had been followed — a proposition 
which finds no supporters among serious historians. 
Among novels, on the other hand, Corinne 
indubitably counts to a certain extent, and in a 
certain way. It is a monument of self-deception, 
just as Adolphe is a monument of self-analysis. 
Both works alike may be described as bitter cries, 
but the methods of the authors are antithetically 
opposed. Madame de Stael writes as one who 
cries for the moon, and can find consolation in 
pretending that she has got it ; Benjamin Constant 
z 353 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

as one who has obtained the moon, and only- 
wishes that someone would take it off his hands. 
He, that is to say, built on a real and she on a 
fanciful foundation ; and the distinction is reflected 
in the respective fortunes of the two romances. 
The success of Corinne was a brilliant flash in 
the pan ; the success of Adolphe was much less 
brilliant, but has proved much more enduring. 
For Adolphe was true ; and, even in fiction, it is 
truth that tells in the long run. 

Personality, however, tells also ; and in all 
Madame de Stael's work it was the personality, 
not the philosophy, that told. Her version of 
the philosophy of Kant, for instance, is interest- 
ing not because it is sound but because it is 
sentimental, and because sentiment rather than 
philosophy was to her the thing that mattered. 
She wanted to pull wires ; she wanted to be 
witty and wise ; she wanted a group of flatterers 
to hang upon her wise and witty words ; but all 
that was nothing worth unless she could also 
love and be loved. That is the idea which 
pervades her writings, giving them such freshness 
and vitality as they still possess. That was the 
quality by which she held Benjamin Constant's 
affection, in spite of his infidelities, for so many 
years, and compelled him, in spite of quarrels and 
estrangements, to consecrate a night of memories 
and sighs to her when she was dead. 

Benjamin Constant had still, as it happened, a 
good many years to live ; and the last years of 

354 



Benjamin Constant's Political Career 

his life were, from the point of view of the political 
historian, the most important. So far, he had 
only been able to give himself to politics by fits 
and starts. He had lived, like Madame de Stael, 
though to a less extent, in exile. The love of 
women had sometimes sapped his energies, and 
sometimes diverted them into unexpected channels. 
In so far as he had had any political career at all, 
it had been a long series of inconsistencies. Now 
he had a policy and a cause. His action during 
the Hundred Days had caused him, for a time, to 
be proscribed, and was a weapon in the hands of 
his enemies for ever afterwards ; but, on his 
return, he soon became a Deputy, and a leading 
figure in the ranks of the Liberal Opposition to 
the Bourbon rigime. His speeches have been 
printed, and fill several volumes ; but their 
interest is for the historian rather than the 
biographer. It suffices here to note the im- 
pression which he had made. 

'* His enunciation," writes M. de Lomenie, 
" was difficult, especially in his first few sentences ; 
but as soon as he warmed to his work attention 
was captivated by the appearance of his magnifi- 
cent figure, and his face, so tired, and yet so 
handsome, so distinguished, so original, set in a 
frame of long blond locks which fell in curls upon 
his coat collar, and by the curious combination 
of German nonchalance, British stiffness, and 
French vivacity which characterised his per- 
sonality. Always witty in his expressions of his 

355 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

emotion, always polite in his persiflage, always 
cool in his anger, possessed of the art of saying all 
that there was to be said, he compelled even 
those whom his utterances profoundly irritated, 
to listen to him." 

" One saw him arrive at the Chamber," writes 
M. Loeve Veimars, "always a few minutes before 
the opening of the sitting, attired in his Deputy's 
uniform, embroidered with silver lace, in order 
to be ready to ascend the tribune, in which that 
costume was de rigueur, at any moment. His 
head was fair and white. He wore an old round 
hat, and held under his arm an overcoat, some 
manuscripts, some books, some printers' proofs, 
a portfolio of official papers, and his crutch." 

For his friends — and especially for the students 
who loudly shouted applause — he was the en- 
thusiastic champion of liberty ; for his enemies 
he was a man of selfish and extravagant ambition. 
In truth he was neither the one thing nor the other, 
but an emotional bankrupt, who could only escape 
from himself in strife and feverish excitement. 

He had, of course, "the good Charlotte" — the 
most forp-ivingf as well as the most devoted of 
wives. He knew her worth. He sings her 
praises in his letters, seeming, as it were, to pat 
her on the back, in appreciative recognition of 
her "angelic" qualities. But she could not fill 
his life, and his affection for her was only the 
sort of affection that he might have felt for an 
attentive domestic servant. He had told Madame 

356 



The Burden of Consciousness 

R^camier that he would try to make her happy 
and pretend to share her happiness. Perhaps 
he did pretend ; perhaps there were times when 
the pretence deceived her. But he himself was 
never deceived. He had survived his interest 
in life, and there remained only the effort to 
escape from the burden of consciousness. He 
made speeches to escape from it ; he fought duels 
to escape from it; he worked hard at his book 
on Religions to escape from it ; he gambled to 
escape from it ; and all his endeavours were 
equally in vain. 

Sometimes he appeared to be taking himself 
seriously; at other times he did not. One of 
his duels — that with M. de Forbin — seems to 
belong to farcical extravaganza. Crippled with 
gout, he fired his pistol, sitting in a bath-chair, 
and honour was declared to be satisfied when the 
chair was hit. There are stories, too, of his having 
ridiculed, at the gaming-table, the impassioned 
arguments which he had just employed in the 
Chamber ; and he certainly suffered in public 
esteem by his frequentation of such resorts. But 
he was thoroughly in earnest when he wrote about 
religion. As Sainte-Beuve justly says : " ' I wish 
I could believe ' is written across the pages of his 
work on that great subject as clearly as * I wish 
I could love' is written across the pages of 
Adolpke^ Nor was his conduct by any means 
that of a farceur during the days of the Revolu- 
tion of 1830. 

357 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

The outbreak found him in the country, where 
he had just undergone a grave operation, when 
Lafayette wrote to him : *' We are playing a game 
here in which our heads may be the stakes. 
Come and lay your own stake on the table." 
The doctors forbade him to stir, but he defied 
them, caused himself to be carried in a sedan- 
chair to the Hotel de Ville, and supported, in 
an eloquent harangue, the monarchical solution 
of the crisis. " They carried him," says M. Loeve 
Veimars, " from the Hotel de Ville to the Palais 
Royal. It was a banner torn and tattered by 
many combats that they thus unfolded and dis- 
played with enthusiasm before the fire of the 
enemy." His reward, apart from his self-satisfac- 
tion, was a gift of 200,000 francs from Louis- 
Philippe ; and his enemies naturally declared that 
he had been bought, though his friends avow 
that, in accepting the gift, he stipulated that 
he should still be considered free to oppose the 
Government if he disagreed with its measures. 

At the height of his political influence and 
success, however, he remained a supremely un- 
happy man, as is clear from his letters to his 
cousins. Sometimes it is his failing health that 
is his trouble. He fell one day, while descending 
from the tribune, and thenceforward suffered from 
lameness in addition to his gout, and had to walk 
with crutches. " The axe," he writes to Rosalie, 
"has been laid to the root of the tree." Perhaps 
he will live for another ten or twenty years, but 

358 



Failing Health 

only from day to day, " thanking nature like the 
man who every morning thanked the Sultan 
because his head was still on his shoulders." 
His chest, too, is affected. It gets worse every 
winter. " One of these winters it will be all over 
with me, and that winter is not very distant." 
A little later, he says : — 

"Thirty years ago I said to myself that, after 
I was fifty, I would not worry about my health 
except for the purpose of avoiding acute suffering, 
and I am more faithful to this resolution than 
I expected to be. My stomach is getting weak, 
and my eyes are failing. I do nothing to fortify 
the former, and I do not spare the latter. If 
I lose my sight before my death, I will keep quiet 
and ruminate on my past life. Meanwhile I 
remain active by habit, like the knight in 
Ariosto, who went on fighting, forgetting that 
he was dead." 

And then it is : — 

** Yes, dear Rosalie, the years roll by, taking our 
strength with them, and bringing infirmities in 
their train. Bit by bit, they deprive us of all our 
pleasures, leaving us for sustenance only the past 
which is sorrowful, and for perspective only the 
future which is short. I thank you for what you 
say as to the use to which I have put my life. I 
have not done the quarter of what I meant to do, and 
if I were not very much ashamed of having wasted 
my time and my powers, I should be very proud 
of all the kind things that people are saying about 
what I have achieved in spite of the waste. For 

359 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

the rest, what does it matter ? A ditch is there, 
awaiting the laborious as well as the lazy, the 
famous as well as the obscure, closing com- 
placently without caring what it covers. I should 
like to see you before I descend into it ; but I 
dare no longer make plans. ... I work, as they 
say, to 'leave something behind me.' This me, 
what will become of it, and what will it have in 
common with that which I shall have left ? No 
matter! I work because habit compels me and 
the time is heavy on my hands." 

Last of all we may quote this passage from a 
letter written to Charles de Constant on the 
occasion of the death of his wife : — 

" Thus is the world depopulated for those who 
are advanced in life. All that is dear to them 
forsakes them, and the world is no longer for 
them anything but a vast desert, to be crossed 
with courage. But courage is not the same thing 
as happiness." 

When that was written, the end was very near, 
though there was still time for one more failure. 
On November i8, 1830, Benjamin Constant pre- 
sented himself unsuccessfully as a candidate for 
a vacant chair in the French Academy. To the 
author of Adolphe the Academicians preferred a 
M. Viennet, whoever he may have been ; and 
about three weeks afterwards, on December 8, 
he died. 

Life had disappointed him ; success had come 
360 



A Great Tribute 

to him too late to be gratifying; he had but 
recently written that he was glad that he was sixty 
years of age, and that his pilgrimage was nearly 
over. But his funeral was a blaze of triumph, 
and the people mourned for him as for a hero, 
A civic wreath was laid upon his seat in the 
Chamber. A demand was made that the entire 
Chamber, in costume, should attend his obsequies, 
and that a mourning crape should be attached for 
several days to the flag placed in the Hall of 
Session, above the President's chair. Crape was 
also hung from the windows of many of the 
houses in the streets through which the procession 
passed. The students, who idolised him, un- 
harnessed the horses from the funeral car and drew 
it themselves to Pere Lachaise. Lafayette pro- 
nounced the funeral oration over his grave. ** From 
nine o'clock to eleven," writes one of Miss Berry's 
correspondents, "there were eight or nine pro- 
cessions at a time crossing the Tuileries Gardens, 
headed by tricoloured flags, with his name and 
* Libert6 et Droit ' written upon them. The pro- 
cession reached almost the whole length of the 
boulevards ; nothing similar was ever seen at 
Paris except at the funeral of General Foy." 

A great tribute truly, though if he had known 
that it was to be paid, his cynicism would have 
stood between him and any sublime sense of 
exaltation. The passion of his life was not to be 
applauded, but to be loved; and it would have 
meant more to him to know that his wife, whom 

361 



Madame de Stael and Her Lovers 

he had so often treated so badly, mourned for him 
in all sincerity. 

" Dear good cousin," she wrote to Rosalie, '* I 
only write you a few lines to-day to say that I 
owe to your letter a few moments of respite from 
my grief. It is so full of friendship for my poor 
Benjamin, so full of understanding of his noble 
character and his loving and tormented heart, so 
indulgent for the need which he felt for excite- 
ment and agitation — precisely because it was 
inseparable from the need of liberty and the hatred 
of all oppression." 

Things being as they were, he would have 
asked, one imagines, no better testimonial, no 
kinder epitaph. We may read it as the proof 
that in one at least of his aspirations he had 
succeeded. " Rendons Charlotte heureuse " is one 
of the good resolutions of the Diary, repeated in 
one of the letters to Madame Recamier, to whom 
Benjamin Constant wrote : " I should like to finish 
my days in tranquillity, giving to the person of 
whose destiny I have taken charge, and who is 
angelic in her affection and goodness, a happiness 
which I will try to pretend to share." 

It was a happiness which he assuredly did not 
succeed in sharing ; for he asked more from life, 
and from women, than Charlotte — than any 
woman, for that matter — had it in her power to 
give him. But Charlotte refused to make her 
own limitations a ground of quarrel with him ; 
she was not jealous of his past, and did not try to 

362 



"The Good Charlotte" 

disturb him in the sanctuary of his inner life, but 
yielded herself to deception, and had her reward 
in happiness, still cherishing her idol in spite of 
her knowledge that it had feet of clay. Nor did 
her love or her adoration cease with death. Years 
afterwards, when Charles de Constant called upon 
her in Paris, she received him, standing by her 
husband's bust. 



The End 



363 



INDEX 



Acosta, Chateau d', 195. 
"Adolphe," 125, 214, 312, 314, 

316, 317, 320, 321, 323, 353, 

354, 357, 360. 
Albany, Comtesse d', 174, 237, 

269, 338. 
Alembert, d', 27. 
Alfieri, 335. 
" de rAUemagne," 246, 248, 250, 

279, 281, 294. 
Arblay, General d', 67. 
Argenson, Marquis d', 328. 
Argenson, Rene d', 332. 
Auxerre, 194. 

Barante, Prospere de, 190, 261, 

342. 
Barclay de Tolly, 273. 
Barras, 102-105, 329. 
Bernadotte, 292. 
Berry, Miss, 74, 285, 286, 297, 

313, 324, 32s, 329, 344. 
Boissy-d'Anglas, 102. 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 132, 133, 

138, 149. 
Bon deli, Julie von, 4, 17. 
Bonstetten, 20, 30, 127, 161, 197, 

199, 200-202, 244, 256, 351. 
Bowles, 288. 
Brevans, 231-233. 
Broglie, Due de, 313, 324, 325, 

328-330, 332, 334, 335-337, 

341, 342, 344-346, 351- 
Broglie, Duchesse de, 333, 337, 

352. See also Stael, Alber- 

tine de. 
Brougham, Henry, 288, 337. 
Brun, Frederika, 194, 197, 244. 
Bruns\vick, Prince of, 138. 



Brunswick, Princess of, 138. 
Burney, Dr., 68. 
Burney, Fanny, 38, 67-70. 
Byron, 185, 285-287, 303, 338-340- 
Byron, Lady, 339. 

CandoUe, de, 337. 

Canning, 325. 

Carbonnifere, Ramond de, 35, 
280. 

Caroline, Queen of Naples, 301. 

Cayla, Mile, 11. 

Charles-Augustus, Duke, 138. 

"Charlotte," 212-214, 216-223, 
228-231, 234-237, 241, 256- 
258, 260, 264, 265, 275-278, 
290, 292, 311, 326, 347, 356, 
362. See also Madame 
Dutertre. 

Charrifere, M. de, 89, 92. 

Charriere, Madame de, 89-92, 
94, 96, 98, 141, 163, 188, 206, 
208, 213, 229. 

Chateaubriand, 114, 310, 343. 

Chateauvieux, Frederic de, 337. 

Chatre, Marquise de la, 67, 77. 

Coleridge, 287. 

Colombier, 89, 93-96. 

" Considerations sur la Revolu- 
tion frangaise," 340. 

Constant, Benjamin, 32, 82-84, 
el passim. 

Constant, M. Juste de, 231. 

Constant, Madame, 310, 312. 
See also " Charlotte." 

Constant, Rosalie de, 44, 84, 94, 
100, 102, 112, 117, 119-121, 
140,141,151, 153, 197, 201,202, 
213, 223, 225, 234, 236, 239, 



365 



Index 



240, 242, 243, 251, 261, 298, 
300, 316, 317, 358, 362. 

Coppet, 31, 32, 34, 48, 49, 60, 61, 
62, 71, 72, 75, 81, 102, 109, 
no,. 115, 117, 127, 130, 140, 
149, 172, 177, 182, 185, 209, 
219, 224, 239, 242, 244, 319, 

324, 332, 334, 343, 351- 
"Corinne," 174, 185, 186, 189-193, 

215,250, 267, 281, 353,354- 
Correvon, M., 10, 11. 
Courland, Duchess of, 138, 165, 

196, 202. 
Cram, Baroness von, 94. 
Grassier, 2, 5, 23. 
Croker, 288. 
Curchod, Suzanne, i, 3-8, 10-12, 

20, 22. See also Madame 

Necker. 
Curchod, Pastor, 6, 21. 
Curran, 287. 
Cuvier, 197, 200. 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, 287. 

Decazes, Due, 343. 

"Delphine," 113, 123-126, 129, 
131, 188, 306. 

Devonshire, Duchess of, 287. 

Deyverdun, M., 8. 

Diderot, 27. 

Divonne, M. de, 198. 

" Dix Annees d'Exil," 247, 267, 
274. 

Dumont, Etienne, 287, 2)37' 

Dutertre, M., 215, 217, 218. 

Dutertre, Madame, 173, 212, 
215,216,232. See also Is/idLdaxne. 
de Hardenberg and "Char- 
lotte." 

Edgeworth, Maria, 285. 

Fauriel, 116, 215. 
Fersen, Count, 40. 
Fichte, 138. 
Forbin, M. de, 303, 304, 357. 

Galiani, Abbe, 27. 
GenHs, Madame de, 123. 



Gerando, M. de, 52, 128-130, 

139, 217, 298. 
Gibbon, 4-10, 12,23,26,27,29,30, 

61,63,64, 151, 156, 241, 329. 
" Glenarvon," 339. 
Gloucester, Duke of, 287. 
Godwin, 287. 
Goethe, i34-i37, 142- 
Gonfalonieri, 336. 
Grattan, 287. 

Grimm, Baron, 27, 74, 81, 88. 
Guibert, General, 38, 39, 40, 52, 

126, 

Hamilton, Lady, 319. 

Hardenberg, Madame de, 112, 
154, 162. See also Madame 
Dutertre and " Charlotte." 

Hardenberg, Princess von, 231. 

Harrowby, Lord, 288, 325. 

Haussonville, Comte d', 334. 

Hennin, Princesse d', 67. 

Herder, 137, 142. 

Hervey, Mrs., 338, 339. 

Holland, Lady, 288, 313. 

Huber, Mademoiselle, 28. See 
also Madame Rilliet-Huber. 

Humboldt, 325. 

Hume, David, 27. 

Jaucourt, M., 67, 71, 76. 
Jersey, Lady, 279, 287. 
Jordan, Camille, 129-131, 133, 

172, 189, 194, 342. 
"Journal Intime," 141, 223, 262, 

292, 331. 
Juniper Hall, 66. 
Junot, 132. 
Jurine, Dr., 344. 

Kotzebue, 138, 139. 
Krudner, Madame de, 127, 130, 
245, 306-309, 314. 

Lafayette, 361. 
Laforest, 138. 
Laharpe, 337. 
Lally-Tollendal, 67, 343. 
Lamb, Lady Caroline, 339. 



366 



Index 



Langallerie, M. de, 198, 219, 

245, 338. 
Lansdowne, Lord, 287, 337. 
Le Brun, Madame Vigee, 197. 
Lespinasse,Madainoiselle, 38,40. 
Lieven, Madame de, 313. 
Lindsay, Madame, 154, 177, 

181, 182, 212, 316, 319. 
Liverpool, Lord, 287, 294. 
Louise, Duchess, 138. 
Louis Philippe, 358. 

Mackintosh, Sir James, 185, 287, 

325- 
Maistre, Count Joseph de, 81. 
Malouet, M., 67. 
Malthus, 288. 

Marmontel, M. de, 22, 27, 64. 
Maulinie, Pastor, 198. 
Meistei-, Henri, 62, 74, 79, 80, 

102, 113, 115, r35, 245, 251, 

252, 29s, 343, 351. 
Mickleham, 38, 66, 297. 
Montesquiou, M. de, 77. 
Monti, Vincenzo, 176, 187 196, 

210, 336. 
Montmorency, Mathieu de, 53, 

67, 71, 76, 194, 198, 246, 247, 

266, 296, 345. 
Morellet, Abbe, 27. 
Morris, Gouverneur, 54-56, 185. 
Moultou, Pastor, 7, 10, 22. 
Murray, John, 279, 289, 294. 

Napoleon, 132, 150, 173, 195, 
280, 267, 269, 272, 274, 292, 
296, 310, 330, 351. 

Narbonne, M. de, 52, 54, 56, 57, 
58, 63, 65-68, 70, 74-76, 78, 
loi, 126, 129, 131, 150, 189, 
254, 255, 285, 297, 329. 

Narishkin, 273. 

Nassau, Madame de, 105, 112, 
152, 153, 219, 227-231, 233, 
235, 236, 241. 

Necker, Anne - Louise - Ger- 
maine, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36, 38, 
41, 42. See also Stael, 
Madame de. 



Necker, Jacques, 11-16, 17, 20- 

22, 24, 25, 29-31, 33, 34, 40, 
43, 46-48, 54-57, 60-62, 65, 
T2, 74,80, no, 146, 147,281, 

291, 353- 
Necker, Louis, 13, 17-19, 

48. 
Necker, Madame, 1, 7, 9, 10, 

21-27, 29, 30, 34, 59-61, 63, 

64, 74, 79, 156. See also 

Suzanne Curchod. 
Necker de Saussure, Madame, 

28, 37, 124, 125, 149, 166, 

170. 

Oberkirch, Baroness d', 21. 
Oelenschlager, 197, 246. 
Orange, Prince of, 138, 139. 
Orleans, Duke of, 345. 
Orloff, 273. 

Pavilliard, Pastor, 4. 
Phillips, Mrs., 67, 70. 
Pictet, 196. 
Pitt, William, 40, 72. 

Radziwill, 138, 139. 

Randall, Mile, 201, 345, 346. 

Raynal, Abb^, 22, 27, 30. 

Recamier, M., 211. 

Recamier, Madame, 70, 127, 
132, 180-182, 196-198, 204, 
206, 215, 247, 266, 269, 300, 
301, 309, 310, 314, 315, 325- 
327, 333, 340, 348, 357, 362. 

Reichardt, 136. 

RilHet-Huber, 201, 252, 295, 
343. See also Huber, Made- 
moiselle. 

Ritter, Karl, 196. 

Robinson, Crabb, 134, 141, 279, 
281, 287, 288, 353- 

Rocca, Albert-Michel-Jean de, 
255-260, 267-270, 272, 274- 
276, 290, 295, 296, 329, 337, 
340, 341, 343, 346, 347, 352- 

Rocca, Alphonse de, 351. 

Rogers, 288. 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 287. 



367 



Index 



Rousseau, Jean -Jacques, 7, 18, 

91, 312. 
Royer-Collard, 342. 

Sabran, Comte de, 197, 199, 
200, 246, 266. 

Saint-Lambert, M., 27. 

Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 27. 

SivUssure, M. de, 81. 

Schiller, 136, 137. 

Schlegel, A. W., 138, r49j iS4, 
156, 161, 165-166, 169, 174, 
185, 187, 188, 194-197, 199, 
200, 202, 208, 211, 218, 225, 
244-247, 268, 281, 293, 298, 

336, 337, 341, 346, 353- 

Sheridan, 287. 

Sismondi, 127, 148, 149, 161, 
164, 165, 174, 196, 199, 200, 
204, 237, 246, 269, 319, 333, 

335, 351- 
Stael, Albert de, 60, 149, 195, 

239, 251, 269, 270, 285. 
Stael, Albertine de, 108, 137, 

141, 143, 176, 199, 202, 276, 

278, 294, 298, 305, 313, 327- 

329, 331-334- 

Stael, Auguste de, 195, 199, 200, 
238, 260, 268,293,332,351. 

Stael-Holstein, Baron de, 38, 
40-42, 45, 49, 52, 53, 58. 

Stael, Madame de, 4, 9, 10, 13, 
30, 32, 38, 39, 44-46, 48, 50, 51, 
53-58, 60, 62, 66-72, 74, 75, 
78, 79, 81, 82, et passim. 



Stafford, Lord, 288. 
Stein, 273, 282. 
Stormont, Lord, 27. 
Suard, M., 27, 185. 
Sussex, Duke of, 287. 
Suvaroff, 273. 

Talleyrand, M. de, 52, 54, 56, 
67, 75, 76, 78, 104, 124, 126, 
293, 340. 

Tallien, 59, 102. 

Talma, Madame, 143, 158, 161, 
162, 170, 180-184, 206,319. 

Thelusson, 20, 31. 

Thomas, 27, 64. 

Tieck, 231. 

Tissot, Dr., 2, 30. 

Tronchin, Dr., 18, 27, 28. 

" Valerie," 306. 

Vermenoux, Madame, 20-22, 

74. 
Vemes, Madame, 18. 
Vernet, 20. 
Villers, 129, 137, 280. 
Voght, Baron de, 196, 198, 200, 

256. 
Voss, 135. 

Weimar, 137, 138-141. 
Wellington, Duke of, 325. 
Werner, 196, 200, 246. 
Whitbread, 287. 
Wieland, 137, 142. 
Wilberforce, 288. 



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